<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<title>To Believe In This Living by orphan_account</title>
<style type="text/css">

body { background-color: #ffffff; }
.CI {
text-align:center;
margin-top:0px;
margin-bottom:0px;
padding:0px;
}
.center   {text-align: center;}
.cover    {text-align: center;}
.full     {width: 100%; }
.quarter  {width: 25%; }
.smcap    {font-variant: small-caps;}
.u        {text-decoration: underline;}
.bold     {font-weight: bold;}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25528228">To Believe In This Living</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account'>orphan_account</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The 100 (TV)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>But there is some science, Canon Bisexual Character, Canon Lesbian Character, Canon Lesbian Relationship, F/F, It’s honestly pretty fluffy, NO dub-con, Non-Traditional Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, because what kind of societal drivers would A/B/O biology actually form?, no g!p (debatable), no non-con, sex gender and pregnancy are all different from the trope and from reality</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-07-27</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-08-09</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-05 08:02:16</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>8</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>28,177</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/25528228</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>If forced to calculate odds, Clarke Griffin would have placed <i>kissing Lexa Woods</i> pretty close to zero. Yet, here they are.

</p>
<p>If only Anya wasn’t so scary, Raven wasn’t so drawn to hot alien sex robots, and Clarke wasn’t so….Clarke-like.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Anya/Raven Reyes, Clarke Griffin/Lexa</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>56</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>243</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Chapter 1</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>NOTE: This is an A/B/O fic, in that the biology of alpha, beta, and omega exists. There is NO non-consent or dubious consent. There ARE small mentions of a phallus-type-thingum, however it is not a g!p fic.</p><p>As the author, I’ve done my best to create a believable (or at least internally consistent) A/B/O biology, and explore how that biological imperative would shape society. I’ve also done my best to avoid boring world building exposition, and just let the characters be at the forefront.</p><p>If you’re willing to give this a chance, and willing to minimally suspend your disbelief, I’m very willing to entertain you.<br/>——</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“Something is wrong with Lexa.”</p><p>Clarke is already flailing in the dark, phone pinched against her shoulder and slithering into pants before the owner of the voice actually registers.</p><p>“Anya?”</p><p>“Something,” Anya grinds out, “is wrong with Lexa. They called me, but they won’t tell me what’s happening, and I’m four hours away.”</p><p>“Where,” Clarke demands, and Anya tells her.</p><p>It’s not her hospital, but that isn’t going to be a problem. Clarke Griffin knows how to make an entrance.</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>☆</p>
</div><p>It ends up being a little bit of a problem.</p><p>Five minutes, instead of the three she’d estimated, before she’s led back to a room. On the exam table, Lexa is curled, her arms wrapped around herself and her back to the door. Clarke can see the knobs of her spine and the curl of her tattoos bisected by the chest strap of her bra, because someone has taken Lexa’s shirt.</p><p>“Lexa,” Clarke breathes. Even if this turns out to be bad, it’s not Lexa bleeding and full of tubes. She doesn’t even have an I.V.</p><p>On the bed, Lexa looks over her shoulder, eyes flaring wide.</p><p>“Clarke?”</p><p>“Hey,” Clarke says, snagging the exam stool from beside a be-stethoscoped man she’s decided to ignore on grounds of probably being the one to take Lexa’s shirt. Lexa tracks her as she rolls towards the side of the bed Lexa’s facing. “Anya called me.”</p><p>Lexa lets her head thump back down onto the thin pillow, paper crinkling. Clarke does a quick visual scan. Lexa is pale and sweating. Legs drawn up, arms crossed over her chest and hands clenched, teeth grinding together. </p><p>It’s pretty obvious that inside her system is a torrenting cascade of catecholamines, prostaglandins, and other hardcore hormones. In other words, Lexa is in some serious fucking pain. </p><p>Clarke takes one of her hands, lacing their fingers together. Lexa makes a noise, soft and almost pleading before squeezing down hard. </p><p>“I’m all over this,” Clarke tells her before finally looking at the man, still standing at the far side of the exam table. </p><p>“Ma’am,” he begins, hints of impatience, and Clarke flattens her eyes a little as she corrects to: “Doctor.”</p><p>He frowns.</p><p>“Doctor Clarke Griffin, and this is my friend Lexa.” She raises an expectant eyebrow. She’s raised both interns, and junior residence. “Why don’t you tell me what’s happening here.”</p><p>On the bed, Lexa breaths harsh and fast through her teeth, eyes squeezed shut. </p><p>“The patient—”</p><p>“Ms. Woods,” Clarke says, mild. He gives her an exasperated look, but picks up a charting tablet, glancing over it.</p><p>“Ms. Woods was triaged complaining of fever, malaise, nausea, and abdominal pain that began in the periumbilical region then migrated right. Her temperature is 100.5ºF, pulse 110, respiration 22, blood pressure 140/90. Pain was marked at 8 out of 10.” He looks up.</p><p>“So you’ve ordered a CBC panel, and she’s waiting for a CT scan?” Clarke prods.</p><p>“The differential checklist for an omega is—” the doctor supplies, but Clarke is no longer listening. She’s looking down at Lexa, whose fingers have spammed down inside her own.</p><p>The doctor keeps saying words, talking about checklists that begin with ruling out pelvic inflammatory disease, and urinary tract infections. On the little rolling table sits a pelvic kit. The speculum already plugged in and warming.</p><p>“Omega?” Clarke asks, soft and confused. Her hand is stiff, and Lexa’s lips are trembling, eyes screwing tighter. A little pool of moisture grows, and slides down the bridge of Lexa’s nose.</p><p>Omega. Clarke feels it burn into her cheeks. All the assumptions she’d made, across all the years. Tall, competent, centered Lexa. No extra at hip or thigh. But Christ above, are humans ever going to learn that phenotype isn’t indicative of some sort of universal truth.</p><p>She pulls her hand away. On the table, Lexa’s eyes snap open. Full of fear, and pain, and misery.</p><p>“Hey, there you are,” Clarke said, soft, following through on her intention, wiping Lexa’s tears away with the pads of her fingers. Lexa swallows. Across from them the doctor is still speaking. Clarke finds it distinctly unendurable.</p><p>“Stop talking,” Clarke snaps. The doctor, surprised, does exactly that. “Does the differential checklist for a female omega patient start with making them take their shirt off, and not giving them the dignity of a gown?”</p><p>The doctor sputters. Clarke sits back down on the stool, face on level with Lexa’s. “Lex,” she asks, making Lexa’s eyes flicker open again. “Can I do a couple things?”</p><p>“How did you get here?” Lexa’s face is still, but grooved tightly with pain.</p><p>“Anya called.” Clarke reminds her, frowning with sudden worry over cognitive functions.</p><p>Lexa smiles, very faintly. As always, it's more in her eyes that on her mouth. “She must be desperate, but I meant: did you drive?”</p><p>“Oh, yes,” Clarke agrees, grinning back. </p><p>“Terrifying,” Lexa mutters.</p><p>“Ha ha,” Clarke says, flat, putting a hand on Lexa’s shoulder. “Stop distracting me; on your back.”</p><p>Lexa resists.</p><p>“I know,” Clarke murmurs, taking away the pressure. “I know it hurts. I’m so sorry. But let me do this, and I can make it better.”</p><p>Lexa stares, eyes huge and green, then she nods. Clarke helps her uncurl. “Gentle as I can,” she says, and gets her hands on Lexa’s abdomen quickly. Lexa tries to cringe away, but Clarke is already pressing down, lower right quadrant. Lexa makes a choked sound against her teeth when Clarke releases the pressure. </p><p>“Just one more,” she reassures. Moving down the table to lift her left leg, a few inches, then tapping sharply on her heel. Lexa grunts. “That’s it,” Clarke murmurs. Lexa curls again, relieving the pressure on her inflamed peritoneum.</p><p>“Abdominal guarding, rebound, and a positive heel tap,” she says, towards the doctor and in a new tone. “I’m pretty sure we can rule out PID.” She raises an eyebrow. “Don’t you think?”</p><p>The doctor’s face goes stony, but Clarke does not give a single shit. “I need a 22 gauge I.V. set up, a bag of Ringers, and for you to prescribe Morphine.”</p><p>The doctor’s face manages to set just a little more. Clarke sighs. “I think maybe I should reintroduce myself. My name is Doctor Clarke Griffin. You may recognize it from such shows as My Mother is Senator Griffin. You may also recognize the word ‘esquire,’ which goes after the Woods part of Lexa Woods, Esquire.” </p><p>She pauses, watching it sink in. The guy tenses satisfactory, and Clarke continues. “The way I see it, you’ve mistreated and neglected someone from a protected class, and you probably don’t want that to come to the attention of anyone outside this room. Do you?” </p><p>He slumps, and gestures at a rolling cart in the corner of the room. Clarke rifles through it, finding what she needs. Tossing the pelvic kit onto the counter, making room for her own prep, and snapping on gloves.</p><p>“Okay, Lex. I’m going to make it better.” She arranges Lexa’s arm, sliding the cannula into the blue vein below the crook of her elbow. Tapping gently to distract as the needle pierces, but Lexa doesn’t react to the pinch. Her eyes are closed again.</p><p>“Done,” Clark tells her, pulling the needle back out. Leaving the cannula, pressing a thumb down to stop the blood. Threading the tubing onto the end and taping the whole assembly down.</p><p>“One more minute,” she says to Lexa. Then, to the doctor still glowering beside her, “Prescribe the Morphine.”</p><p>“You—” he gets out, before Clarke’s look shuts him up. Hard, and flat, and angry. </p><p>A nurse brings Morphine, and Clarke snatches the syringe for herself, lining the needle up with the port, and slowly pushing the plunger down. “You don’t have privileges here,” the glowering doctor yelps, but Clarke is too busy watching the way Lexa’s shoulders finally drop. </p><p>“Clarke,” she says. Opening eyes with pupils already going to pinpricks, breathing out something shaky. </p><p>“Hey,” Clarke watches closely, counting Lexa’s breaths. Slowing, but acceptable. “Good stuff, huh?”</p><p>Lexa smiles. Clarke taps her warm skin, far enough from the cannula not to jar anything. “I’m going to give you the second half, but first I need to ask some questions, okay?”</p><p>Lexa nods, and Clarke decides she’s still sober enough. “I’m pretty sure you have appendicitis. You might need surgery, and I’d like to take you to my hospital. I don’t think they’re treating you very well here.” In the corner, the other doctor huffs. “You get to make the choice, though. Is that something you’d like?”</p><p>“They wouldn’t help me,” Lexa tells Clarke, eyes sliding past her, like she’s ashamed. “It hurt so bad.” Her eyes come back to Clark, wide and increasingly drugged. “I didn’t know anything could hurt like that.”</p><p>“Lucky we’ve got the magic elixir,” Clarke teases gently, and Lexa smiles again.</p><p>“I want to go with you, Clarke.”</p><p>Three minutes later, Clarke has Lexa strapped into the passenger side of her car, where Lexa slowly lists sideways, blinking gently. Clarke reaches over, bold in the unusual circumstances. Lacing their fingers back together, keeping their hands on top of the gear shift. “It’s going to be okay,” she reassures, and Lexa smiles again, loose and soft.</p><p>“I know,” she murmurs.</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>☆</p>
</div><p>“Johnny B.” Clarke announces, smiling up at the tall man as he pulls the curtain around Lexa’s second ER bed of the night.</p><p>Back in the ambulance bay where Clarke had shamelessly parked, Lexa had gone flat and narrow lipped at the wheelchair Clarke snagged and flourished in her direction. Hauling herself out of the car and getting an impressive five strides, hunched but
determined. Then another six in a hitching hobble that kept her right heel from striking the ground. Then, just standing.</p><p>“Your steed, Commander.” Clarke wiggled the wheelchair she’d patiently wheeled alongside Lexa’s pilgrimage. Lexa huffed, and sat down. Regal as a queen.</p><p>“Griff,” John smiles back, then glances at Lexa, “and friend.”</p><p>“Lexa,” Clarke fills in, “and her most likely inflamed appendix.”</p><p>John makes a sympathetic face, nodding as Clarke reels off vitals and clinical findings. Stopping abruptly when Clarke hesitates, then says, “Lexa is omega.” Both their eyes flick down, almost guilty, but Lexa’s supine and slack, eyes glazed.</p><p>“Differential diagnosis includes pelvic exam,” John says, thoughtful, but Clarke shakes her head, vehement.</p><p>“Don’t quote that outdated bullshit at me. You’re smarter than that.” John crosses his arms, and taps a finger against his chin. It almost makes Clarke smile.</p><p>“Okay, chillax, Clarke.”</p><p>Clarke does not, in fact, chillax. Only narrows her eyes. John grins, and lifts his hands in mock defeat. “Look, you’re right. The clinical findings are enough for diagnosis,” Clarke makes a triumphant noise, but John makes a conflicted face, “but, <i>but</i> she’s omega, and malpractice suits are a drag.”</p><p>“John,” Clarke warns, but he waves it away.</p><p>“Compromise,” he says instead. “Let me get a CBC and a contrast CT scan. Top of the queue for the scanner,” he promises when Clarke does not immediately respond.</p><p>“Okay,” Clarke agrees, letting the casual joking slip into a worried frown once he’s hustled off. Lexa’s eyes slide over to her face, slow.</p><p>“Are things happening?”</p><p>“Yup.” Clarke runs her palm along the top of Lexa’s forearm.</p><p>“Should I be scared?”</p><p>“Nope.” </p><p>“Okay,” Lexa says, a soft exhale as her eyes close again.</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>☆</p>
</div><p>“An outer appendiceal diameter of 10 millimeters on CT cross section,” John announces. A natural enthusiasm that makes his rota days as surgical consult the highlight of life in the ER.</p><p>Clarke frowns at him, annoyed at the extra hour it all took. The Morphine is starting to wear off and Lexa’s maintaining classic hip flexion, legs drawn up to take the pressure off her abdomen. A wrinkle forms between her brows, but John’s already supplying the translation.</p><p>“Appendicitis,” he smiles. “An hour in the operating room. Laparoscopic. Sadly, no battle scars to impress the suitors with.”</p><p>“I’m observing,” Clarke says, fast.</p><p>“I highly doubt that,” John said right back.</p><p>“Not scrubbed. In the back,” Clarke reassures. Lexa eyes her.</p><p>“Not a chance,” John says back, still with his smile. Lexa shifts to eye him.</p><p>“Johnny B.” Clarke says, bring Lexa’s eyes back to her over the <i>implications</i> in her voice. Of that one time they were interns together, with the cop and that bicycle they’d liberated. Or that other time with the fireworks and the cop. Clarke is prepared to bring them, and from the rounding of Lexa’s eyes, she knows it too.</p><p>“Clarkypoo,” and John sounds very nearly delighted at it all. Lexa manages to look unashamedly interested, and really, gosh, friendships these days. “I remind you about family, and the fact that Hell will freeze over first.”</p><p>“Okay, okay,” Clarke pounces onto the weak point, railroading the fresh opening of John’s lip flaps. “I’ll stay in the prep room. Just until they intubate.”</p><p>“Is that when someone shoves a tube down your throat because they’ve knocked you so unconscious that your brain forgets to breathe?” Lexa breaks in from the bed, and yeah, perhaps Clarke had a little bit forgotten she was there.</p><p>“Err,” John hedges.</p><p>Lexa crinkles her brow down into a glare that nearly anyone would find formidable. Clarke doesn’t blame the way he snatches up the loaded syringe. “This,” he says, “is Versed. It’s designed specifically to make nights like this a lot better. Would you like some?”</p><p>“Yes.” Lexa nods empathically. “Lots. As much as possible. Right now.”</p><p>Lexa watches him inject the sedative, and watches him leave, quoting his need to make preparations. Then she says, “Family?”</p><p>“Friends and family,” Clarke tells her. “He was quoting the rule.”</p><p>“That doesn’t matter.” Lexa waves a hand, eyes half mast from the sedative. Her lip ticks up in a helpless grin. Clarke grins back, aware of the side effects of the Versed creeping through Lexa’s brain.  </p><p>“Oh?” Clarke asks, possibly amused at Lexa’s expense.</p><p>“We’re not friends.” Lexa tells her, grave with sincerity and import.</p><p>“We’re not?” Clarke asks, because this is news to her, but the earnestness of Lexa’s expression is the kind of adorable that matches something very young and very fluffy being very determined while also very inept. Kittens, puppies, baby sloths, Lexas.</p><p>“No,” Lexa says, certain and assured.</p><p>“You probably aren’t going to remember this,” Clarke tells her, but Lexa scowls a little deeper.</p><p>“Yes I will.”</p><p>“Okay,” Clarke agrees, because Lexa definitely isn’t going to remember this. </p><p>Which, of course, should never be an excuse. So possibly, <i>probably,</i> Clarke should be ashamed of how she weaves her fingers back in Lexa’s. How she presses Lexa’s palm high against her ribs and whirrs. Using her full breath, higher on the inhale and lower on the exhale.</p><p>It makes the last of the fear and pain leak from Lexa’s face, her eyelids sliding mostly closed with sedation and the exact 20-30 hertz evolutionarily hardwired to spur dopamine in her brain. In the face of all that, the best Clarke can conjure is a little jab of guilt over not feeling any guilt.</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>☆</p>
</div>“Where the fuck is Lexa.”<p>Clarke manages to simultaneously wake up, freeze in place, and experience a sudden quadrupling of her blood pressure. Spurred to a high-octane revving by the serrated metal pressing just inside the curve of her left nostril.</p><p>“Gurk?” she queries.</p><p>“Lexa,” Anya repeats, rocking a toothy bit of key against tearable flesh. </p><p>Clarke jerks her head away. “Why do you have to be so fucking crazy all the time?” She hisses, low. Anya grins amicably, and puts the keys away.</p><p>“Because it’s fun, Griffin. Now, produce Lexa.”</p><p>“She’s in surgery.”</p><p>Anya frowns. “The average appendectomy takes 30 to 60 minutes. I called you five hours ago.”</p><p>“Yeah, and between then and right now, I had to wake up, drive to Memorial, bust her out of Memorial, and drive here. Then Lexa had to get diagnostics, get prepped, have surgery, go to first stage recovery, start breathing on her own again, get moved to second stage recovery, then actually wake up. I know she’s an overachiever, or whatever, but even Lexa can’t bend the space-time continuum.”</p><p>Anya flops down into the chair next to Clarke. Arms crossed and staring directly at the opposite wall. Sitting this close, it’s easy to notice the thin smell of her tension and unhappiness.</p><p>“You searched Google to see how long an appy takes,” Clarke says. Anya raises one eyebrow about a millimeter. “You also read about all the things that can go wrong, and now you’re freaked out,” Clarke adds. Anya lowers the eyebrow into something disdainful, but doesn’t sock Clarke in the face, so she figures she’s on the money. “Lexa’s going to be fine,” she reassures. Beside her, Anya grunts.</p><p>They sit, Clarke slumping down to drift into a low-energy stupor. Blinking slowly, until she realizes she’s not blinking at all. Jerking her eyes open at the wick of shoes on the industrial carpeting. John smiles at them. Still in his scrub cap, with Superman’s logo directly over his forehead.</p><p>“Laparoscopic,” he tells her. “No rupture. Successfully extubated and moved to second stage recovery.</p><p>Anya stands, a quick uncoil, and John blinks, startled. Clarke uses the distraction to surreptitiously check for the potentiality of drool drying on her face before standing as well. “John, this is Anya. She belongs to Lexa. Anya, John did Lexa’s surgery. Everything he just said is good news.”</p><p>“I will see her now.” Anya stares straight at John, apparently unperturbed by social niceties. John just nods, well versed in high stakes customer service.</p><p>“A nurse will—”</p><p>“You will,” Anya cuts in, staring flat and glitter eyed. He glances at Clarke, who shrugs.</p><p>“Lexa says she’s had all her shots, but I’ve never seen any records. Do you really want to risk it?”</p><p>John laughs, and takes them to Lexa. Reclined in a hospital bed with the head propped up, holding a little cup of juice. Lexa is staring at the peel back foil lid, a wrinkle creasing between her brows.</p><p>“Here.” Clarke takes the cup, peels back a small bit of foil, and gives it back to Lexa. Lexa holds the cup, and stares at Clarke, still puzzled. Clarke nudges her hand. “Drink.”</p><p>“Lexa,” Anya says from behind Clarke’s shoulder, standing close enough in the small curtained area that her breath is gusting against Clarke’s neck. Lexa’s eyes snap to her.</p><p>“<i>Onya,</i>” she mutters, and it is one of the handful of times her accent has outstripped her careful American diction. Anya mutters something back, too low and choppy for Clarke to even pick out words, let alone meaning. </p><p>Both women look at Clarke, with varying degrees of pupillary competence. Clarke actually blushes. “Whatever she just said, it’s not true.”</p><p>“Clarke!” Lexa says, like it’s a full sentence. Like she’s thrilled Clarke even exists. Then again, her voice lower, her eyes flicking across her face. “Clarke.” </p><p>“Thank you,” Anya grinds out, still behind her shoulder, making the hair on the back of Clarke’s neck think about rising. “For helping,” she adds. “It was very kind.”</p><p>Clarke thinks about asking her if the words burned like ice, or like fire, but “Anya!” Lexa says, with the same thrill. </p><p>“Sure,” Clarke says instead. “Anytime. Glad I was here.” Anya stares at her. Clark shoves her hands into her pockets, rocking on her heels. “I’ll just head out now,” she adds. To Lexa, “Drink your juice, okay?”</p><p>Lexa looks at the juice in her hand, surprised all over again. The wrinkle in her brow reforming, her hair a curly cascade escaping its braid. Clarke makes her escape. </p><p>She spends a few days sending quick texts, and Lexa dutifully responds with status updates. It dries up with Lexa wishing her a good weekend, and Clarke letting it go fallow.</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>☆</p>
</div><p>A week later, she stumbles across Lexa. Camped out at a coffee shop near the hospital for some unfathomable reason. Lexa looks up at just the wrong moment, smiling and lifting her hand.</p><p>Driven by adrenaline, Clarke taps her watch, grimaces, awkwardly grabs both her drink and scone, and flees.</p><p>In her peripheral vision, Lexa slowly drops her hand.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Chapter 2</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p><b>Note about A/B/O mechanics:</b> If left to it's own devices, an A/B/O ecosystem would slowly become 100% female, due to a fruitful f/f pairing being unable to pass along a Y chromosome. In this world, different cultures have developed varying methods of controlling alpha females, thereby keeping the genders balanced. </p><p>America uses good 'ol shame, social disapproval, and encouraging alpha females into dangerous occupations. The reality is so ingrained in society that Your Intrepid Authour never found a good way to explain it diegetically. Instead, please enjoy this semi-lazy authour's note.<br/>--<br/><b>Note about YY chromosomes:</b> If two people with XY chromosomes make babies, then offspring with YY chromosomes <i>are</i> going to result.<br/>--<br/></p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Clarke volunteers at the free clinic. Once a week, on Wednesday afternoons. She likes it. Being in the clinic reminds her of why she became a doctor. That very first dream of being a pair of boots on the ground, working to make things better.</p><p>The woman sitting on the edge of the bed has a prosthetic leg. The rim of the socket ending just below her knee, and a tattoo inked just above. It spells out <i>cannon fodder.</i></p><p>Clarke notices, but doesn’t linger, and does not comment. Patient’s bodies are not hers to remark on. Still, the woman’s lips twist a little wry, and she taps near the ink.</p><p>“The leg was in the sandbox. The tattoo was from Main Street, back when I was still feeling surly about the whole thing.”</p><p>“Marines?” Clarke asks, pegging it even before the woman nods. Doctors in free clinics learn the look that each branch stamps into people.</p><p>“Yup. Deployed once with 3rd Battalion, 2nd Marines, and twice with the 1st Battalion, 1st Marines. </p><p>“First of the First,” Clarke gives her the Battalion's nickname, impressed. </p><p>“Yeah, well,” her patient shrugs. “Turns out, third time really is the charm.”</p><p>“Hard,” Clarke murmurs, because doctors in free clinics learn that part, too. The woman shrugs again. </p><p>“It’s what we do, right? Young and dumb, no one to marry, no one to make babies with. Might as well go off and have radical adventures. Got lucky, though. Came back, and adopted a little boy.” She smiles, fond. “A newtie. Wouldnt’a let me have him, otherwise. He’s a little funny, of course.” She shrugs, because double-Y boys are all a little funny, for one reason or another. “I could get him tested but I figure he deserves time to just be himself. Plenty of time to get him categorized and pigeonholed.”</p><p>“That’s what I would do with mine,” Clarke tells her, and maybe there’s a wistfulness over curtailed opportunities that leaks through, or maybe it’s just the shared alpha experience. Either way, the woman’s smile softens.</p><p>“Hey, never say never, Doc. You already beat the odds with medical school, maybe you can do it again.”</p><p>“Never say never,” Clarke agrees, looking down to tap at the charting tablet, getting them firmly back into professional territory. “Everything looks good. I’ll get your prescription called over to your pharmacy.”</p><p>“Thanks, Doc.” The woman gives her a little two fingers salute, striding off with almost no limp.</p>
<hr/><p>“Oh,” Clarke says, when she finds Lexa sitting on Raven’s porch. An open beer by her hip, and a lit joint in her hand.</p><p>“Hello,” Lexa says, serious before she grins. Clarke sits beside her, waving a hand when Lexa offers the joint. </p><p>“Random drug tests. Plus a general feeling of vague responsibility as a citizen physician.” Lexa nods, smoke curling from between her fingers. They sit, watching the quiet street.</p><p>“I wanted to thank you,” Lexa finally breaks the pause, eyes darting sideways towards Clarke. “For helping me that night. It was kind.”</p><p>“Easy,” Clarke tells her, shedding the praise. “All I did was show up.”</p><p>“It was kind,” Lexa repeats, and Clarke shuffles a little.</p><p>“I was coming to see Raven,” she says, just to be making noise.</p><p>“She’s inside,” Lexa says.</p><p>“Is Anya also inside?” Clarke asks, suspicious.</p><p>“Yes,” Lexa smiles again, glinting and amused. Clarke shudders, self-mockingly dramatic and Lexa actually laughs.</p><p>“Then Raven can wait.” She sticks a hand out. “No pot, so give me your beer.”</p><p>“What?” Lexa demands, incredulous, but she’s already handing the bottle over, slick with cold and condensate. Clarke takes a drink, then squints at the rim suspiciously.</p><p>“You don’t have any tingling about the lips, right?”</p><p>“You have to actually be kissing people to get herpes, Clarke.”</p><p>The way Lexa says people’s names, the way she says <i>Clarke’s</i> name, should not be legal, but Clarke rallies. “First, that’s not true. Second, no one currently taking up space on your down-to-bang list?”</p><p>“No one,” Lexa says, light but also closing off the avenue. Clarke drains the beer. She thinks about them not being friends, and how dumb it is to try and fight against her relegation.</p><p>“Do you want to go to a movie with me? I was coming over to ask Raven, but I’m not about to enter that house with the hot alien cyborg in residence.”</p><p>Dumb is probably Clarke’s middle name.</p><p>“Me?” Lexa looks at her. Surprise, and also something else in her expression. Something that’s almost fear, or suspicion.</p><p>“Of course you,” Clarke smiles.</p><p>“Anya isn’t an alien,” Lexa says mildly, face smoothing as she takes another drag. Clarke watches the way the smoke slips back out of her parted lips.</p><p>“I notice that you didn’t mention the cyborg part,” Clarke says back, and the wanting gives a little tug. <i>Careful,</i> she thinks.</p><p>“Or the hot part. What movie?”</p><p>Clarke flaps a hand. “Who cares. The point isn’t the movie. The point is popcorn, junior mints, and orange soda, and being off-shift for three entire days.”</p><p>“Heady freedom, indeed.” Lexa stubs out the joint on the concrete step, leaving a black ash mark. She stands. Clarke blinks up at her, once, before jumping up, but Lexa’s holding the cuff of her shirt to her own nose. “Do I smell?”</p><p>Clarke - dumb, dumb, <i>dumb</i> Clarke - doesn’t even think before taking Lexa’s hand, and pressing her nose into her palm. Lexa smells faintly of pot, detergent, and below that the flat scent of active suppressors.</p><p>“Nope,” Clarke grins. Lexa looks faintly doubtful, but accepts it.</p><p>“I think you might be a little stoned,” Clarke says later, maneuvering her ass into the theater seat while also clutching to her chest a vat of popcorn, an only slightly smaller vat of fizzing soda, and a box of candy. </p><p>“No,” Lexa giggles, actually giggles, holding the seat down against its spring. She pulls the popcorn bucket from Clarke’s delicately balanced hold, leaving her yelping as the soda wobbles dangerously. “This is mine now.”</p><p>“But...” Clarke whines, and Lexa smiles, satisfied.</p><p>“Finders keepers,” she lilts.</p><p>Clarke narrows her eyes. Lexa narrows hers right back. </p><p>Clark licks a wet path from the base of her palm all the way to the tip of her <i>fuck you</i> finger, and shoves her hand into the bucket, popcorn kernels cascading into Lexa’s lap as she yelps. Slowly, Clarke pulls a handful back out, more kernels spilling, and shoves it into her mouth. Chewing with wide open accomplishment.</p><p>Lexa’s spine is ramrod, her jaw tight, and her lap full of little buttery kernels. Clarke keeps chewing, pretending not to feel any apprehension. Without breaking their gaze, Lexa reaches down and plucks up a kernel with long fingers. Bringing it up to her face, curling her tongue out to lap the popcorn slowly into her mouth.</p><p>Clarke blinks. Clarke makes a tiny meeping noise, right at the back of her throat. Clarke snaps her head around to look steadfastly at the blank movie screen. Categorically refusing to look elsewhere as Lexa fills their little bubble with a psionic aura of smug. </p><p>The lights go down, and Clarke realizes fast that the movie is going to be terrible. A shitty action thing, with predictable characters. The alphas are almost interchangeable, with their cut jaws and determined glints. The woman to die gloriously, and the man to lead soberly. The omega to look pretty in his tight uniform, making eyes at the woman, but understanding real adulthood comes from making the best possible reproductive match. The male alpha to cosset and protect him, and their children.</p><p>It takes stoner Lexa about ten minutes to start giggling, and Clarke about zero seconds to join in. Until people are twisting around to glare at them. Clarke, forgetting herself, leans close to shove a junior mint against Lexa’s lips, and to whisper “shh,” in her ear. </p><p>Lexa freezes, and Clarke feels the stillness sink into her, but then Lexa wraps her own fingers around Clarke’s wrist. Holding her steady as she sucks the candy from Clarke’s hold, her eyes gleaming in the light of the incendiary bombs exploding on the screen.</p><p>Clarke reverts to staring straight ahead, and retains absolutely no memory of how the movie ends.</p><p>“Why were you sitting outside Raven’s house, anyway?” she asks, walking back from the theater, nestled into a little pocket of hipster establishments near Raven’s place.</p><p>“Just wanted to,” Lexa says. Her face is suddenly still, so Clarke just nods. </p><p>“What the lady wants,” she says, getting a flash of what Lexa’s hand might feel like held inside her own. She puts her hands in her pockets, and ambles on. Beside her, Lexa’s shoulders relax back down.</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>☆</p>
</div><p>Clarke sends Lexa a kitten meme later in the week. Punch drunk from the end of a 50 hour shift, and not responsible without supervision.</p><p>Lexa sends back a little smiling emoji, but Clarke is already asleep. She wakes up with better sense.</p>
<hr/><p>“If you don’t come, I will personally defenestrate you into that dumpster.” </p><p>Raven’s threat doesn't feel any weaker, just for being delivered over the phone.</p><p>“How do you even know there’s a dumpster,” Clarke asks, craning to look out the threatened window, down into a dusty construction dumpster, one side indented with a fender shaped dent. Evidence of previous difficulties, encountered wherever it had been before this morning’s loud and clanging delivery.</p><p>“I have powers, Clarke. Dark powers. Powerful powers. Don’t make me use them.”</p><p>“Fine,” Clarke mutters. “But swear to God Raven, no tequila. I can’t.”</p><p>“Whatever,” Raven tells her. “Be here at five. We’re pregaming. With canapés.”</p><p>“Anything for canapés,” Clarke quips. Raven snorts, and hangs up on her.</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>☆</p>
</div><p>Clarke arrives at 5:15, just to prove her independence. Walking herself through the door without a knock, finding Raven perched on the back of the couch. Beer in hand, with the foot of her good leg divoting deeply into the seat cushion, the heel of her braced leg resting lightly on the outer edge.</p><p>The key to sidestepping the stiff pain of struggling up from a seated position is to just never sink into one. Clarke circles behind the couch, and loops her arms over Raven’s shoulders. </p><p>“I bought tequila,” Raven says. “Special. Just for you.” Clarke presses her face into the little hollow between the point of Raven’s scapula, and the poking curve of her spinous processes.</p><p>“You’re such a dick,” she says, unbearably fond. Raven shrugs, but under Clarke’s cheek, the tension coiled along her spine relaxes, just a bit. Clarke pulls her face away, pressing her thumbs into the bunched multifidus, spinalis, longissimus. Pushing deep against Raven’s chronic pain, careful not to unbalance the subject of her massage.</p><p>“It’s a burden, but someone has to keep your awesome Pavlovian vomiting thing going.” Raven grunts, shifting. “Remember that one time the police stopped, to admire your puking form? They talked about measuring how far you got.” She’s obnoxiously nostalgic, but she’s also unwinding under Clarke’s hands.</p><p>“Remember how we agreed never to talk about it again?” Clarke mocks back. She finds a knot, making Raven suddenly stiffen, then moan as it loosens.</p><p>“Holy shit, Reyes. Take the porn noises down a notch. Your hot alien cyborg girlfriend is going to hear you and get the wrong idea.”</p><p>“No I won’t,” Anya says, from <i>very close</i> behind Clarke’s shoulder. Clarke freezes, two icy heartbeats of pure liquid nitrogen, before she unlocks enough to squeal and spring away. Anya steps smoothly into the vacated spot, reaching a hand to steady Raven.</p><p>“Your friend is very jumpy,” Anya tells her, accepting Raven’s weight as she presses her back into Anya’s front. Head tipping into the cradle of her shoulder, smiling up.</p><p>“Clarke wants tequila, my hot alien sex robot. Go fetch.”</p><p>“No,” Anya says flatly. It makes Raven snort, and Anya looks down, murmuring some little phrase just loud enough for Clarke to know it isn’t English.</p><p>“Rude,” Clarke huffs. Anya rests her chin against the top of Raven’s head, and stares at Clarke.</p><p>Back in high school, Clarke had had a friend, who’d had a mother, who’d had a cat. A seal pointed, blue eyed little asshole who used his beauty to seduce the unwary. Purring at the first long stroke down his back, then whirling to sink his fangs in and rake with his claws. </p><p>Only the mom had been immune. More than once, Clarke had skirted by the menace as he lay curled in the woman’s lap. Eyes squeezed shut and paws kneading, her fingers under his chin and stroking along his ribs, love in every line between them.</p><p>Sometimes, looking at Anya, Clarke thinks about that cat and calculates reincarnation timelines. “Cyborg,” she mutters to herself, moving off towards the kitchen, and some non-tequila alcohol.</p><p>She’s pouting, but definitely not hiding, in the kitchen when Octavia shows up. </p><p>“Clarkypoo!” her friend cries, arms wide and welcoming. Clarke flings her own arms out and around, leaning into the hug. They both work at the hospital, but beyond harried nods in the hallways, they don’t get to see each other often. </p><p>Eventually, Clarke nudges her back and grasps her shoulders. “Octavia,” she says, serious. “Octavia, I was promised canapés. Were you promised canapés?”</p><p>“I was not,” Octavia tells her, glancing around the kitchen. Over her shoulder, down the direct line of sight, Clarke sees the front door open. Lexa walks through. The slouch of her jeans and the curve of her neckline right in Clarke’s vision. </p><p>Clarke rotates Octavia, until her back is to the view. In front of her, sympathy surges into Octavia’s eyes.</p><p>“Clarke,” she murmurs, but Clarke releases her grasp and waves it away. Tonight is for being happy with her friends. “Let’s raid the fridge. I bet between the two of us, both Doctors of Medicine, we can come up with something pretty horrifying.”</p><p>The canapés end up being ketchup based, and are in fact pretty horrifying. Clarke declares them perfect, and shoves one into Octavia’s mouth.</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>☆</p>
</div><p>“Hello, Clarke.”</p><p>It’s much later in the night, and Raven’s party is in full swing. Not quite reaching the height of their undergraduate days - the alcohol is better, and no one is having sex on someone else’s bed - but the first floor is still overheated with bodies.</p><p>Clarke had found a corner to watch it all from, and now Lexa has found her.</p><p>“Hey, Lexa. How’s tricks?” Clarke smiles, but Lexa is curiously tense. Hesitation in the twitch of her fingers, and in the lines of her face. </p><p>“I have come to apologize.” The words are formal, and they don’t have the cadence of a native speaker. Clarke blinks, puzzling through them.</p><p>“What?”</p><p>“At the movie,” Lexa says, her gaze rigid on Clarke’s chin, and her spine stiff as a soldier being punished. “I believe I made you uncomfortable. I wanted to apologize.”</p><p>“Hey, no.” Clarke shakes her head. “You didn’t make me uncomfortable. I had fun.”</p><p>“Oh.” Lexa’s spine relaxes, but something like hurt wicks into her eyes. She looks away. “Oh,” she says again, low and soft. In the tone are all the texts Clarke has not returned, and the way she had ignored Lexa at the coffee shop. Then she nods, and starts backing away. “I understand now. I’m sorry I bothered you.”</p><p>Lexa clearly doesn’t understand, but that doesn’t change the facts. That Clarke really needs to keep her big mouth shut. That whatever assumption Lexa just formed - that Clarke is too busy, or too cool, or just too assholeish for new friends - is safe and should stand. That Clarke <i>really needs</i> to let Lexa walk away.</p><p>“No, wait. Whatever you’re thinking, it’s wrong. It’s—” She stops, stymied, then blurts. “I’ve got an algorithm.”</p><p>“An algorithm,” Lexa repeats.</p><p>“Mm,” Clarke says. Squinting into the distance, and wishing it would rush forward and save her.</p><p>“Why?”</p><p>“Because you’re great.” She really needs to shut up now, but the static head of honesty is too much. “You’re great to be around. Smart, and quick, and funny. So I have to be careful.” She offers a hopeful smile, explanation all squared away. </p><p>Too much to hope for, though, because Lexa‘s face sharpens. “What are you talking about?”</p><p>Something like a bird flutters in Clarke’s chest, the beating of her heart like wings against a window. “It’s just something my dad used to tell me: ‘that which is watered, tends to grow.’”</p><p>Lexa just looks at her, and Clarke can see what she must look like when she’s busy being a lawyer. Eyes unfocused, darting up to the left, following the thread of someone else’s unfathomable logic.</p><p>“I don’t understand,” Lexa finally says. A tiny stiffness in her voice when she admits: “Idioms can be difficult. For me.” </p><p>The moment for escaping Raven’s stupid party with dignity intact passed a long time ago. Way back when she was looking at that stupid dumpster. Clarke clutches her stupid beer for strength, and tries to make her peace with the moment. “It means that whatever you pay attention to, whatever you metaphorically water with your mental energy stays big in your mind.”</p><p>“And what are you watering, Clarke, with your mind?”</p><p>“You,” Clarke admits. Her turn to not quite meet Lexa’s eyes. Shoulders in tight against what comes next. Lexa is going to be <i>kind,</i> and it is going to hurt.</p><p>Except Lexa doesn’t say anything, and somehow that is worse, and babble rushes up her throat. “You’re insanely hot, Lex. And fun to be around. And you care. I like you, <i>like you</i>-like you, but I know you don’t like me back like that, so I try not to be a creeper. You know?”</p><p>Clarke dribbles to a miserable halt. Lexa continues to stare at her for a long, long beat of their hearts. “You just said ‘like’ a great many times,” Lexa finally says.</p><p>“Yeah. Sorry.” Clarke can feel her blush. Hot, and so incandescent it must be visible across the room. “Awkward, huh?” She tries for a laugh, and winces. “I’ll probably just,” she gestures weakly towards the kitchen doorway, and the swirling bodies. “I should go.”</p><p>Lexa’s lips pull upward. “Clarke Griffin, if you move, I will hurt you.” Clarke freezes. “Is that why you never sit next to me? Why you never text me back?” Lexa asks, and she almost seems to be laughing in that way of hers, where it’s mostly in her eyes. </p><p>Clarke nods. It’s her exact algorithm. It gets to be in charge, because Clarke cannot be trusted. Requiring her to put people between her seat and Lexa’s, and to let conversations die. Makes her put her back to Lexa as often as possible, forbidding her to go over to say hello.</p><p>Lexa moves towards her slowly. Clarke presses back into the counter, but there’s only so far to go. Pretty soon Lexa has her nose squashed into the space just below Clarke’s ear, holding warm and close for one long cycle of breath before pulling back. She’s smiling, her eyes alight, but Clarke’s so locked into her shiver of autonomous sensory meridian response that she’s honestly not sure she’ll ever return from orbit.</p><p>“You’re cute Clarke, but you’re also pretty dumb.”</p><p>Clarke feels it like a collapsing star inside her chest. “Lexa,” she begs, nearly panting, definitely trembling. “You have to know what I am. You have to.”</p><p>“Yes,” Lexa says. “You’re Clarke.” Then she kisses her. Out in the main room some asshole voyeur hoots, and there is clapping.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. Chapter 3</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p><b>Content Advisory:</b> This chapter contains brief reference to assault statistics.<br/>——<br/></p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Clarke’s still in her scrubs when the knock comes. Standing just inside the door, thumbing a text into her phone. The sound makes her jump, and peer suspiciously through the peephole. </p><p>It’s Lexa, holding a bouquet of long-stemmed flowers, her starched white button down falling in crisp lines. It catches, bright and hot inside Clarke’s chest, and she yanks the door open.</p><p>“You stalking me?” she asks, leaning against the door jam and crossing her arms.</p><p>“Well,” Lexa tells her, smiling a little as she offers the bouquet. “You are eminently stalkable.”</p><p>“I’m not sure that’s quite the compliment you think it is,” Clarke tells her, moving back to let Lexa through the door, taking the flowers. Lexa smiles again, but her eyes are cautious. Hands sliding into her pockets, to watch quietly as Clarke pushes her nose into the bouquet.</p><p>She is, Clarke realizes, uncertain of her welcome. This thing between them still on colt legs.</p><p>“You know what I was doing, right when you knocked?” Clarke puts the flowers down on that uniquely adult piece of furniture, the entryway table. Trailing her fingers across Lexa’s shoulders as she circles behind the other woman. Pressing against her back, their cheeks touching as she holds her phone out, clicked open to show the message she’d been composing. A reply to Lexa’s text asking about her morning.</p><p>“I left it in my locker while I was on shift, and then I was driving. But as soon as I got home, I wanted to talk to you.”</p><p>In front of her, Lexa lets out a soft breath. More a movement of her body than a sound in the air. “Thank you,” Clarke tells her softly, lips brushing against the curving helix of her ear, “for the flowers. They’re very pretty.”</p><p>Lexa shivers, breathing out again. Clarke flattens a hand against her stomach, pulling them tighter and pressing her lips into the hollow behind Lexa’s ear. Lexa gasps, then she stiffens and twists out of Clarke’s grasp. “Wait,” she says. “Wait.”  Alarm surges, but Lexa just retrieves a brown paper sack from the hallway. “I also brought food. Ramen.”</p><p>“Fucking marry me,” Clarke whispers, making grabby hands towards the bag. Lexa laughs and dances backwards.</p><p>“Go change,” Lexa orders, and Clarke obeys. Listens to the rustle of Lexa learning her kitchen layout as she pulls off her scrubs. The soft sound of cabinet doors, and the jangling of the junk drawer being rifled for chopsticks as she sniffs a shirt, ponders, then decides it’s good enough. </p><p>She’s full and sleepy afterwards, sinking into a broth and carbohydrate fugue state. Stretched on the couch, head in Lexa’s lap as fingers comb through her hair.</p><p>“Gonna take you on a real date,” Clarke murmurs, rolling her head to press her cheek into Lexa’s stomach, yawning. “Soon. Dress up pretty. Take you out.”</p><p>“This wasn’t a real date?” Lexa asks, fingers twitching to scratch.</p><p>“Take you out,” Clarke repeats.</p><p>“This felt pretty real,” Lexa tells her. There might be more, but Clarke is asleep.</p><p>She wakes to a dark and still room. A pillow under her cheek, a blanket pulled up to her chin, and a note about leftovers on the coffee table. Lexa’s script is angular and bold.</p><p>Clarke stumbles around enough to pee, and brush her teeth, and find the bedroom. She puts the note on the bedside table.</p>
<hr/><p>“Diana,” Clarke says, surprised to see the former Marine back so soon.</p><p>“Hey Doc,” the woman says easily. “This is Ezra.” She gestures to the boy Clarke initially missed. Crouched down, studying a pad of paper, numbers listed in long columns. He looks up.</p><p>A neuter, newtie, just like Diana had said two weeks ago. The stamp of his double-Y chromosomes clear on his face. </p><p>“Hello,” he says, polite. “I’m Ezra Lucas Greyson. I’m fourteen. My mom adopted me, but we are still family. Spiritually,” he adds, “not genetically.”</p><p>“Nice to meet you,” Clarke says, crouching down. The pad is actually filled with neatly calculated percentages. She looks up at her usual patient.</p><p>“We’re here for a prescription for respite care. His specialist won’t see us for two months.” Diana tells her, and Ezra looks up again.</p><p>“I can be a handful.” </p><p>“But honest,” Clarke laughs, and the kid looks over to scan her face, evaluating.</p><p>“Sometimes people laugh at me, not with me,” he tells her, serious. Clarke nods.</p><p>“I’m laughing because you said something I thought was charming.”</p><p>“Charming,” Ezra repeats, like he’s memorizing. He brightens. “Did you know that all mammals are either male, or female?” </p><p>Not altogether true, but close enough for Clarke to nod. Ezra’s eyes slide to Diana. She nods, and he takes a deep breath.</p><p>“Only people have genre though. There are three - alpha, beta, omega.”</p><p>“Of course,” Clarke says, settling in cross-legged. Ezra looks at her, surprised at the indulgence. Then he hurriedly flips a page, unfolding pages that have been taped together, filled with box after box of chromosomal combinations. </p><p>It’s a giant Punnett square. All 32 unique human genetic sex-genre combinations penciled in, and their 512 unique offspring.</p><p>“This is me.” He taps to two sub-boxes that pair male alphas with male omegas. The whispered sin of the prefered power matings. Endurable only because 90% of the million statistically probable ØYY zygotes aborted before implantation. And because 60% of the 100,000 live births died in their first year. </p><p>“This is mama.” His finger traces the sub-boxes of beta male crossing beta female. In that meticulously laid out section Clarke recognizes her own parents, as well as her patient’s, and their slim 5% chance of creating an alpha female child.</p><p>Unbidden, Clarke scans down Lexa’s column; female double-recessive, ωωxx. How the sub-box crossed with dominant-recessive Aωxx has a 50% chance, and how the box with double-dominant AAxx has none. </p><p>Clarke stands up. Too fast, from the flash of sympathy across Diana’s face. “No problem on the prescription.” </p><p>“No, wait!” Ezra says, but “social scripts,” his mother warns. Some sort of familial catch phrase that makes him pinch his lips shut, white with the pressure.</p><p>“Hey, but,” Clarke searches for a solution. “How about I make a scanned copy, and I can ask you any questions I think of next time?”</p><p>She winks at Diana’s silently mouthed <i>thank you,</i> clicking the door shut behind her.</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>☆</p>
</div>“Need a favor,” is the first thing she tells John, once she’s managed to find him. Holding out the swab kit.<p>Well, first she drags him back into the ER exam bay she’d just pounced from, and second she proffers him the swab kit. The words are third. A failed attempt to break him out of his rapid cycle blinking.</p><p>She pokes him with the paper wrapped ends of the cotton swabs. Just like a reboot, he jerks, and sighs. “It’s not like you actually need my help,” he points out.</p><p>“Some things you just want your brah around to witness,” Clarke tells him. Poking him closer to where she estimates the male nipple might be. He snatches them.</p><p>“Say fucking ‘ahh’.” He rips the paper covering off. Clarke opens her mouth.</p><p>“Why now?” John asks as he swirls the cotton tips hard against Clarke’s cheek.</p><p>“Shut up,” Clarke mumbles, and grimaces against the taste of the wooden sticks.</p><p>“Articulate,” John notes, snapping the plastic cover over the swabs. “Is it Little Miss Appendectomy?”</p><p>“No!” Clarke snaps, deeply unconvincing if John’s expression is anything to judge by. “It’s just something adults should know about themselves.”</p><p>“Sure,” John agrees. Clarke squints at him, and he winks. “You know the routine. Results in ten days.”</p><p>“Awesome.” Clarke bares her teeth at him, patently insincere. John just winks at her.</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>☆</p>
</div>Clarke is charting at one of the workstations, sucking one of the lollipops she keeps for the kids because sometimes clichés work, glancing up idly as she chases a word. Successful retrieval suddenly made moot by the dawning realization there’s a face coalescing right in her periphery.<p>“Jesus Christ on a <i>crutch</i>.” She manages a nearly flawless triple lux of squeal, crow hop, and heart clutching. Beside her, Anya raises an eyebrow. Clarke manages to let go of her own shirt. “What the fuck, Anya!” she hisses.</p><p>“Coffee,” Anya tells her, like it’s some kind of explanation. The vivid blue of her uniform blouse is a beautiful contrast against the shine of her shield.</p><p>“What <i>about</i> coffee?” Clarke isn’t forgiving. </p><p>“Once a week. You and me.”</p><p>“Why?” Clarke presses against the twitch in her eyelid.</p><p>“You are Raven’s closest friend. You are dating Lexa.” Anya manages to look only a little dyspeptic. “You are...fond to me.”</p><p>“Oh my god! Did Lexa tell you that you had to?” Clarke takes a moment to enjoy the faint grinding of Anya’s molars, before she gestures expansively. “Well, lead on, Officer Woods. Our coffee awaits.”</p><p>“You know,” she adds, doctoring the giant coffee she’s filled from the cafeteria urns, “I could get Lexa to tell you to stop scaring the absolute shit out of me. Ruin all of your fun.”</p><p>“You have very poor situational awareness,” Anya tells her. Holding a much smaller black coffee and actively judging the amount of simple carbohydrates and milk fats Clarke is adding to her cup. Clarke stirs, and the cup homogenizes to a pale beige. Anya shudders. Clarke winks at her. “<i>Ai fleim yu klin,</i>” Anya says calmly. Clarke lets the probably-an-insult roll right off with a shrug. Because free coffee.</p><p>“Tell me, do you need to recharge at night, or is it, like, a solar powered thing?”</p><p>Anya sighs.</p>
<hr/><p>“Date night,” Clarke announces. Patting her stomach, happily full of the Thai noodles that used to be on the plate in front of her. </p><p>“This?” Lexa asks, looking around Clarke’s dining room, which is also the living room and part of the kitchen. Open concept living à la crushing student loan repayment. </p><p>“You and me, hot stuff,” Clarke corrects. “This Saturday. I made a reservation.”</p><p>“Oh,” Lexa goes careful. “I have...an engagement.” She looks apologetic, but Clarke just nods, refusing to acknowledge any of the things happening inside her chest.</p><p>“Right. I should have checked first. Rain check, okay?”</p><p>Lexa gives the impression of wanting to fidget, without actually moving.</p><p>“Really, Lex. It’s okay. I promise.”</p><p>“No.” Lexa shakes her head. “I- would- You could be my guest, on Saturday?”</p><p>“Perfect,” Clarke tells her, and Lexa’s smile makes her forget to ask what the hell she just agreed to.</p><p>“Anya delivered her shovel talk,” Clarke tells her later, as an interesting addendum. They’re slouched on opposite sides of the couch, reading with their feet pressed together. It’s nothing Clarke has wanted before, and everything she wants now.</p><p>“I don’t know what that means,” Lexa tells her, brow wrinkled down as she peers over the top of her book. Clarke just laughs. </p><p>Lexa puts her book on the floor, and clambers up. Kneeing tender things with her sharp fucking kneecaps as she arranges them to her liking. It happens to be fully atop Clarke, and once Clarke gets past the habitual stab of anxiety, it turns out to be to her liking as well. She links her hands behind the small of Lexa’s back.</p><p>“Hi,” she says. Lexa looks down at her, elbows braced over Clarke’s shoulders, so she can trace over her eyebrows, and across her cheeks. </p><p>“You are very strange,” she tells Clarke earnestly, then kisses her. Clarke kisses back, relaxing fully when she realizes Lexa isn’t going to push.</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>☆</p>
</div>Just inside the door to the Tridgeda Mutual Aid Society building is a giant man. Towering. He grunts, then smiles at Lexa. Lexa beams back at him, unabashed.<p><i>Hei Leksa</i>,” he says, low and careful, like he’s used to fitting his sheer physical presence into the world. </p><p>His eyes flick to Clarke, and he adds something in Trigeda that curls into an upward lifting question. Clarke glances at Lexa, reminds herself not to shift, not to let her face be uncomfortable, and to stop being so goddamn lazy about the language.</p><p>“English, Gustus,” Lexa says, then launches into introductions. “Clarke, this is Gustus. He is—” she seems to search for a translation. “He is a leader, here, to us. Gustus, this is Clarke.”</p><p>“<i>Hei, Gustus,</i> Clarke tries. The very corners of the man’s lips twitch, but he’s kinda enough, or just smart enough given the way Lexa’s eyes are boring into him, not to laugh.</p><p>“Hello, Clarke. Welcome. Today is a good day to be here.” His hand is giant, his grasp a practiced moderation.</p><p>“So I’ve heard,” Clarke says, and lets Lexa lead her away through the building. It’s clean, but shabby in the way of things converted on a shoestring budget and maintained by the same. </p><p>Lexa points out a series of little rooms, currently set up for music lessons. A bigger room for games and gatherings. A kitchen, self-explanatory. Then into the big hall that has been converted into a gym. A little cramped, but enough for a half-court floor, with bleachers on one side.</p><p>“Oi,” Raven greets Clarke. She’s been - and there is no other word for it - established in front of the lowest bleacher riser. Sitting in a fancy reclining camp chair, leg up on a matching footrest, snacks at hand, bottles of water stashed under the seat. Her cane is resting nearby, and there are lines dug into her forehead.</p><p>“<i>Hei, Reivon,</i> Clarke tries, and Raven looks at her. Eyes slow and lazy. She snorts.</p><p>“Oh my god, even I can tell that your accent is for shit.”</p><p>“Yeah, yeah,” Clarke grumbles, looking at Raven carefully. “You trying a different strain?”</p><p>“Yes.” Raven frowns. “Coincidentally, it also appears to be for shit.” </p><p>“You need a massage.”</p><p>“Anya will give me one, later.” This time Raven’s grin is neither slow, nor chaste. </p><p>“I will,” Anya says from directly behind Clarke. She manages not to jump. Anya looks as disappointed as a robot can. </p><p>“<i>Niron,</i> she says to Raven, leaning down to kiss her cheek. The lines on Raven’s face relax, and she squirms a hand into one pocket. Digging a handkerchief out, bold orange, and Anya stands quiet as it’s tied around her arm.</p><p>“Orange,” Anya says. </p><p>“You’re the one making me do this medieval shit,” Raven reminds her. Anya snorts, pats her cheek, and lopes off towards the little group Lexa has already joined on the gym floor. </p><p>They’re all wearing gym clothes, but they’re also holding long wooden staffs, and shorter staves. Rolling them between palms, or leaning on them hipshot. Clarke watches as someone jokes, and Lexa laughs. Her eyes are alight, and there is something clearly not American in the tip of her head, and the way her lips move.</p><p>“You get used to it,” Raven says softly, next to her. “Those little moments when you realize they’re had this whole life you can’t really understand. That they’re refugees. You get used to it, but it never really goes away.”</p><p>Clarke inhales something a little tremulous, then shakes it off. “I think your new weed is making you philosophical.”</p><p>“I don’t need weed to be smarter than you, princess,” Raven tells her. “I just need to be faster than the bear.”</p><p>“That made absolutely zero sense,” Clarke tells her. Raven shrugs.</p><p>“Made sense to me.”</p><p>“Me, too.” Octavia adds, joining their little group. Clarke bounces up to hug her. “I mean, I have no idea what we’re talking about, but I support Clarke being wrong.” Octavia grins.</p><p>“Jerks,” Clarke grumbles, sitting back down as Octavia fist bumps Raven. On the gym floor things slowly, slowly coalesce. The chatting people drifting to the sides, until there are only two people on the gym floor, standing inside a circle marked with tape.</p><p>They face a bald, acetic looking man who carefully reviews something. Clarke squints, the universal concept that an exactly correct vision will make a foreign language understandable, and she is definitely going to start learning tomorrow, first thing. The monk looking dude gestures, and the fighters face each other.</p><p>There’s no bowing, no starting ritual. Just bodies crashing into each other, their long staffs clacking. Clarke, proudly allergic to exercise, doesn’t have the vocabulary to describe what happens inside the circle, except that it’s fast, and loud, and holy god, <i>brutal.</i></p><p>“Jesus,” Clarke mutters, shifting as blood spatters from a newly broken nose. The man snarls, every tooth outlined in red as he forces Mr. Nose Breaker back, and back again. Ferocious in his advance, until his opponent taps out. They smile at each other, and clasp forearms. </p><p>The next set of opponents take the circle. When Clarke looks over, Octavia’s eyes are excited. Watching the flickering movements of the fighters. Clarke follows her particular line of sight back to one of the men fighting. </p><p>Particularly the taller, darker, handsomer one. “Oh my god,” Clarke says, in an entirely new tone.</p><p>“His name is Lincoln.” Octavia waggles her eyebrows. “Whoever you do, be good at it.”</p><p>“Grosssssss,” Clarke groans.</p><p>“<i>Au contraire,</i>” Raven adds, “ten points for smutty creativity,” but Clarke is occupied with how Lexa is trotting out to the circle. </p><p>“Um,” Clarke says, as Lexa takes her place. Standing calmly next to a woman with something like 20 extra pounds and three more inches of wingspan. An alpha, for certain. “Are we concerned about this?” she asks, in a concerned tone. </p><p>“No.” It’s Anya, of course. Appearing from whatever trans-dimensional portal she has access to.</p><p>“But—” Clarke protests. Cut off when Monk Dude starts the bout, and suddenly Lexa is dancing. The wooden cracking of her stave against the staff a sharp beat. Her shorter weapon always ready, always deflecting the stronger blows.</p><p>“Wow,” Clarke breaths. Someone, Raven or Octavia whistles a low tone, but Clarke doesn’t turn to look. </p><p>“Alphas think they can win with their strength,” Anya speaks again. “So Lexa must fight smart. Faster, more precise. See, she leads the lumbering fool around by her nose.” </p><p>“I mean, it still doesn’t seem fair,” Clarke says, though Lexa is clearly holding her own. Moving, without ever ceding ground. Never taking the offensive, but somehow never in the place where the other woman’s blows try to land.</p><p>“Fair,” Anya scoffs, and it’s not their almost amicable game. Anya is angry. “You people, in your land of the free, teaching the chickens they have no choice but to rely on the watch of lions.”</p><p>“What?”</p><p>“One in six.”</p><p>“Okay,” Clarke says, deeply uncertain. </p><p>“That is the number. The statistics of your country. One in six omegas. One in fourteen betas.” Anya glances towards Raven, but their conversation isn’t carried inside the noisy gym. When she looks back at Clarke, there is something deep in her eyes. “In the place I was born, which you say is full of despots and savages, we teach the ones who are raped to be the ones who defend themselves. Not so, here.”</p><p>Clarke blanches. Inside the circle, Lexa stamps and screams, her short stave a blur and her face a rictus. Then the opponent is sprawled half outside the tapeline. </p><p>“Like so,” Anya says, and walks off. </p><p>Clarke watches the rest of the first round fights. Two more omegas compete, their staves flicking like stingers, their feet dancing just like the butterfly.</p><p>“It’s a fox guarding the henhouse, or a wolf to guard the sheep,” she tells Anya, the next time she comes to bring Raven snacks. “Not a lion watching the chickens.”</p><p>“Lexa told me of this shovel talk,” Anya tells her. Clarke feels a certain quailing in her liver, but Anya’s face is almost neutral. “You see now that Lexa defends herself, and that you are foolish for ever thinking otherwise?”</p><p>“Yup.” Clarke manages to say. “Loud and clear.”</p><p>When Lexa’s next fight is called, Clarke hoots and claps loud enough to fill the gym to echoing all on her own. Anya sits next to her, but when Lexa forces her opponent to tap, it’s Clarke’s eyes she finds first, full of triumph. </p><p>She finds Clarke soon after. Still wearing her chest protector, sipping water and carrying a plate of pastries. She hands the plate over, but Clarke puts it down. Standing to lock her wrists behind Lexa’s neck. “You were brilliant,” she says. “Awesome, amazing,” she drops her voice, “sexy.”</p><p>“I’m sweaty,” Lexa protests, trying to twist, but Clarke tightens her hold.</p><p>“Who cares?” she says, pressing their foreheads together. Pulling back in time to see how the light fills Lexa’s eyes. </p><p>It’s the last fight when everything goes sideways. Of course. Late into the afternoon, and Lexa’s name in the final bracket. </p><p>This time, she’s squaring off against another omega. Shorter and slighter than Lexa, and perhaps Anya’s rules still apply even within genre, because on her third thrust, his stave slithers around Lexa’s. Instead of the crack of wood there’s a flat and meaty <i>thwack,</i> and Lexa is falling, curled and gasping. </p><p>Clarke stands, but Raven darts out a hand to grab her wrist, shaking her head. </p><p>Lexa tries to get up, but the metal capped tip of the competitor’s stave is under her chin, tipping it up. Lexa glares, but she taps and the two clasp forearms before she strides off. Her head high, and refusing to limp.</p><p>Saying their goodbyes takes nearly an hour, Lexa stopping at each group to stand hipshot but otherwise impassive, Clarke standing as the supportive and interested girlfriend, but mostly busy feeling each second tick. Finally bundling Lexa into her car, back to her apartment, and out of her pants. Sucking breath at how the blood has pooled under the skin of her inner thigh. </p><p>“Sit.” Clarke points at the couch. Lexa compiles with a huff, quirking her lips when Clarke kneels nearly between her legs.</p><p>“Are we playing doctor?”</p><p>“Shut up. You have no idea what that sounded like, sitting in the stands. I thought he had snapped your femur.” She touches well outside the bruise, but Lexa still hisses and bats Clarke’s hand away. “Okay,” Clarke reassures, “I won’t prod. You’re going to have a hell of a bruise, though.”</p><p>“It won’t be my first.” Lexa shrugs, but she’d allowed herself to limp on their short walk from the car, and her face is tight.</p><p>“Ice, and ibuprofen,” Clarke prescribes, then grins. “Doctor’s orders.” She pads away, and returns to shake the bottle at Lexa, who glares. “I’ll shove them down your throat,” Clarke threatens, and Lexa snatches the bottle.</p><p>Clarke heats up leftover curry, and they eat on the couch to the sound of Lexa’s increasingly indignant scoffing at Law &amp; Order. It’s adorable, plus Clarke uses her distraction to toss the bowls into the sink without washing them. </p><p>“Come here,” she croons, sliding back onto the couch with her back to the armrest, holding out a cold pack. Lexa eyeballs her, but wiggles until she’s laying sideways between Clarke’s legs, one ear against her chest.</p><p>“Can you see?” Clarke asks, as she eases the towel covered cold pack down slowly. Lexa hisses at the cold, then nods, cheek brushing the fabric of Clarke’s shirt. </p><p>They switch to a deeply improbable espionage show and Clarke drifts, startling when the volume jumps during a chase scene. “Sorry,” she whispers at Lexa’s grunt, kissing the top of her head.</p><p>“S’okay,” Lexa says, but she shifts uncomfortably. “Would—” she cuts herself off. </p><p>“What?” Clarke asks, slipping her hand into Lexa’s cascading curls, scratching at her scalp.</p><p>“Nothing.”</p><p>“Something,” Clarke contradicts. The hinge of Lexa’s jaw stands out, but Clarke doesn’t press. She’s learned how to spiral in slowly towards the things that live inside the heart of Lexa. </p><p>She lets the silence slip back in, and eventually Lexa finds her way. “Will you… like at the hospital?”</p><p>“At the hospital?” Clarke repeats, blank. Lexa stiffens, but Clarke’s already making the connections. “Wait. You actually remember that? You were drugged to the gills on Versed.”</p><p>“I told you I would,” Lexa cranes up to look at her, displeasure between her eyebrows. “It’s not my fault you didn’t believe me.” She starts to lever herself up. “It’s nothing. It’s late. I should go.”</p><p>“C’mere,” Clarke murmurs, sliding her hand along Lexa’s jaw, gently pressing her ear back against Clarke’s chest.</p><p>In the laboratory, the sound is a macroscopic oscillation of a neuronal ensemble in the infundibular region of Clarke’s brain. Signaling rapid contractions of the glottis and resultant harmonics through both ingressive and egressive phases.</p><p>On the couch, the whirring is just Lexa’s sigh wicking through the fabric of Clarke’s shirt. Warm and relaxed inside the blanket Clarke has spread, Lexa’s scent rises. </p><p>It’s sharper, far headier than it's been before. Clarke counts, does a little extrapolation, and thinks <i>oh.</i></p><p>Two days later, when Clarke presses her nose into the hollow of Lexa’s throat, all she smells is the flat nothing of suppressants. <i>Oh,</i> she thinks again.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0004"><h2>4. Chapter 4</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p><b>Buried Lede Advisory:</b> Wholesale invention of gross morphology is Not Easy.<br/>——<br/></p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Lexa disappears.</p><p>Not really. More that she gets sucked down into a time consuming project that she’s only vaguely defined. Leaving Clarke drifting on a tiny raft of sporadic texts. The itch of waiting for the next alert ping extinguished only when someone is literally - literally=literally, literally≠figuratively, goddamn hipsters - dying in front of Clarke.</p><p>Clarke starts to think she’s lucky to even get those moments of relief. Going over to Octavia’s house on the third evening in desperation.</p><p>“Fucking shoot me.” Clarke crashes face first into Octavia’s couch. </p><p>“Hello, Clarke,” Raven says, high pitched to mock. “I’m fine, thank you for asking.”</p><p>“I miss her,” Clarke whines, face shoved into the scratchy nap of Octavia’s shitty undergraduate couch.</p><p>“You may have mentioned that.” Octavia is bent over her own thighs, stroking nail polish onto her toes. She pauses to examine critically, and looks at their friend. “Raven, has Clarke mentioned missing Lexa?”</p><p>“Dunno,” Raven mutters, searching around for the TV remote. “I stopped listening to her sometime yesterday.” She thinks. “Maybe the day before.”</p><p>“Neither of you are smart,” Clarke snaps, rolling to crush a pillow to her chest and pout.</p><p>“Stupid is,” Octavia shoots back, then grins. “It’s Friday; are we getting you misery drunk, or what?”</p><p>Clarke waves a hand. “Or what. I’m working tomorrow. Twelve hours, bottle to throttle.”</p><p>“Goodie,” Octavia purses her lips to blow. “Unmedicated pining.” Clarke hucks the pillow at her, laughing when Octavia screams “my toes!”</p>
<hr/><p>“It’s six o’clock,” John tells her, finding her hiding in a quiet corner of the ER, tablet in hand and a wrinkle between her eyebrows. “Six oh five, actually.”</p><p>“And?” She isn’t necessarily gracious.</p><p>“And, follow me.”</p><p>She considers a protest. She’s fucking charting, thanks very much. Yet, there will always be charting, and it’s not like Clarke can constitutionally resist a mystery. She follows.</p><p>He takes her to the locker room. “Not what I was picturing,” she frowns, preparatory irritation, but all John does is hand her a towel. </p><p>“That’s as far as my loyalty goes,” he tells her. “You have to get yourself into the shower.”</p><p>Clarke looks at her towel, and looks at the showers, and looks back at John.</p><p>“Oh, and this,” adds, handing her a toiletries bag. Unzippered, it contains makeup. Familiar little palettes and tubes.</p><p>“These are mine,” Clarke says. “From my apartment.” She glares her suspicion, but John holds his hands up.</p><p>“I am but the messenger, Clarkypoo. Following what orders I am given. So, don’t make this any more embarrassing for either of us.” He rotates her by the shoulders, and shoves lightly between her shoulder blades. “Get thee hither, or thither, or whatever, to the showers.”</p><p>Clarke sighs, for the dramatics, and takes a shower.</p><p>Two outfits are hanging on her locker when she gets out. With a note safety pinned to a shirt, the waistband and cuffs of a pair of pants peeking below the hem. The note is a lopsided heart drawn in sharpie, with the words ‘side door’ in Lexa’s hand. </p><p>It’s the black plastic bag threaded over the hangers that really draws the eye, though. Too demure to actually be so innocent. </p><p>Clarke frees it, swallowing at what’s inside. Underwear. <i>Lingerie.</i> Deep blue and trimmed in lace, but nothing outrageous. Nothing that violates the basic functionality of underwear.</p><p>Clarke holds them in her hand, tapping two of her canines together, light and fast. Then she puts Lexa’s gift on, and chooses the dress. Slipping on the heels from the ziplock bag taped over the bottom bar of the hanger.  </p><p>“Hello,” Lexa tells her, leaning against the side of the car. Arms crossed, face solemn, and her eyes alight.</p><p>“You!” Clarke points, accusation, and Lexa’s smile breaks free. She moves to pull the passenger door open, gesturing across.</p><p>“Your chariot.”</p><p>Clarke declines to get in. Just moves forward into Lexa’s space, touching the perfect little divot under the half Windsor knot of her tie. “I miss you, when you go,” she says, too low in her throat and far too close for it to be friendship. “I’m glad when you come back.”</p><p>Lexa’s own throat bobs in a swallow. </p><p>Clarke drops her hand, and pivots into the car. Lexa blinks a little, shakes herself, and shuts the door. </p><p>“Though, you did forget a purse,” Clarke tells her once she’s in the driver’s seat, wallet and cellphone aloft in one hand.</p><p>“No I didn’t.” Lexa plucks both from her grasp, and leans mostly across Clarke’s lap to drop them into the glovebox. The implication becomes a heavy shiver inside Clarke. A short wavelength oscillation that flutters with the beat of her heart. </p><p>“Hm,” she says, as Lexa twists the key. It makes Lexa’s eyes flick to her, then back to the road.</p><p>“I got impatient, waiting for my date,” Lexa finally tells her.</p><p>“I noticed.” Clarke plucks a little at her skirt, waves a hand at the rest of herself. </p><p>“I missed you too,” Lexa says, quiet. “I thought something to make it up to you.”</p><p>“Hm,” Clarke says again, wondering what the night has in store.</p><p>“Is it okay?” Lexa asks, voice casual and her shoulders tight.</p><p>“Of course, baby.” Clarke puts a hand on Lexa’s knee, a little higher than strictly necessary. Lexa gives her another little dart of her eyes, and the radio drones down low. </p><p>The Maitre d’ gives them a professional smile, body expectantly oriented towards Clarke. “Two, under Woods,” Lexa speaks, and he smoothly shifts towards her.</p><p>“Of course.” He smiles, and hands their menus off to an underling with a nod. “Please enjoy.”</p><p>Lexa orders wine. </p><p>No. It’s more than that. Lexa does something Clarke’s never seen in person before. With the sommelier, and the presentation of the bottle, and the whole <i>ritual.</i> Lexa’s long fingers on the glass as she swirls, and the focused concentration on her face as she sips. A far fucking cry from Clarke’s method of pointing at the menu, and sparing everyone from her attempts to pronounce the words.</p><p>Clarke has a sudden, but sincere appreciation for this new method. The press of Lexa’s fingers on the glass, and the slide of her throat, and that wobble of attract-repulse thrumming through her.</p><p>“Well, that was something,” she says, picking up her own wine glass once the vintage has actually been poured. Lexa’s mouth smiles as Clarke sips, but her eyes slide away, off into the low and intimate lighting. </p><p>“Hey,” Clarke knocks the side of her foot against Lexa’s, bringing her attention back. Grinning just a little wicked, twisting the stem between her fingers. “Impressive due diligence, counselor. Researching all that.” She leans forward, putting her chin into her hand. Letting herself be a little charmed, and a little dopey. Lexa blushes, and that watchfulness that has been looking out of her eyes settles back onto its haunches.</p><p>The menu has exactly three options on it, and Clarke realizes that all the tables are being served in lockstep. This place isn’t just fancy, it’s some kind of French-level fancy. </p><p>Well, when you find yourself in for a penny, you might as well just enjoy being in Rome. She closes her menu.</p><p>“You decide,” she tells Lexa. It makes the last of her tension slide away, something bright taking its place. A surprised pleasure that Clarke figures she can strip apart for analysis later. Right now, she’s going to enjoy being wooed.</p><p>They eat lamb with mint sauce, served with asparagus. Plus a potato confection that Clarke might want to marry, but would definitely fuck, and would kill only with her overwhelming love.</p><p>“Did you know,” Clarke asks, cutting the tip off her last spear of asparagus, dragging it through an artful drizzle of hollandaise sauce, “that asparagus takes three years from planting to reach maturity?” She looks at Lexa through her eyelashes, bringing her fork up. </p><p>“Oh?” Lexa asks, her own fork drooping a little.</p><p>“Mm,” Clarke darts her tongue out to lick the sauce. Lexa shifts, and Clarke grins. “It's a perennial, and the plant can live up to fifteen years.”</p><p>“And if I ask how you know all this?”</p><p>“A brief stint as a Future Farmer of America. Chasing a boy.”</p><p>“Of course,” Lexa says, amused. Clarke eats her bite, and watches Lexa filing the information away. <i>Things To Remember About Clarke.</i> </p><p>“It didn’t end well,” she adds. Lexa laughs, low and sweet, and it shoots a hard burst of accomplishment straight down Clarke’s nerves. The dopey creeps back, uncalculated this time, and Clarke clears her throat and demands to know about tort law to cover it all up. </p><p>“A very interesting subject,” Lexa says, without irony or disingenuity, and Clarke nods. </p><p>“I suspect you’re lying through your teeth.” </p><p>“Just listen,” Lexa admonishes, so Clarke happily listens to the blessed little liar. Watching Lexa’s gestures get looser, freed by the unconscious expertise in her words.</p><p>The coffee comes, and while they sip the waiter puts the black folder with the check in front of Clarke. “Thank you,” she says, touching Lexa’s hand as it reaches to claim the folder. “It’s been amazing.”</p><p>“A little pretentious, maybe?” Lexa asks. Tone light, but under is a searching hesitation. </p><p>“No,” Clarke tells her. “I found the level of flattery to be just right.” The bloom of Lexa’s full smile booms through the hollow drum of her chest. That same oscillation that good food and good wine had tamped down.</p><p>It feels nice to be back in the car. Sated, and relaxed, and ready to be home. Right up until she sees the bright and familiar logo, sliding by the driver’s window.</p><p>She lunges across the car, gesturing wildly. “Ice cream!”</p><p>“Hey!” Lexa protests, steering wheel wobbling a little. Clarke points again, more subdued.</p><p>“Sorry. Ice cream.”</p><p>“You could have killed us!” Lexa continues to focus on entirely the wrong element of the situation.</p><p>“Lexa,” Clarke says, calm but firm. Relationships are built on trust and clear communication. “Ice cream.” </p><p>Lexa makes a face, and pulls over for ice cream. “Obedient,” Clarke says, and laughs at Lexa’s glower.</p><p>The interior of the shop makes Clarke blink. The blaring lights and polished surfaces are too bright, after the dark closeness of the car, and the long stretch in the restaurant. Still, the air smells like mainlining sugar. Clarke gapes a grin at her companion.</p><p>“Don’t blame me when you get a stomachache from this,” Lexa grumbles, indulgent and lacing their fingers together. Clarke leans into her, a gentle sway. </p><p>The huffy sniff, floating over from the little seating area off to their right, makes Clarke stiffen. That old, familiar cocktail of sullen inevitability tinged with surprise. Eyes darting sharply sideways to see if Lexa had heard. </p><p>Lexa’s studying the ice cream options with great concentration, and Clarke lets out a tiny breath.</p><p>She used to think that turning around, meeting their eyes and sharing humanity would somehow change things, but that had all been ages and miles ago. Here, now, she just squeezes the hand laced with hers, adding a wink when Lexa looks over. </p><p>“Pretty,” she says, low and just for the two of them. Passing all of the surprise, but none of the hurt to the woman standing next to her. Satisfied at the pleasure that leaps in Lexa’s eyes. </p><p>“Pistachio, please,” she tells the bored but polite kid behind the counter. Accepting the cone he hands over, rolling her eyes at Lexa’s boringly adult cup of chocolate, festooned by nothing beyond a tiny spoon.</p><p>“Not very adventurous,” she notes, but Lexa actually smirks at her.</p><p>“Perhaps,” Lexa says, pausing to curl her tongue around the tiny spoon and swallow, “I’m saving all my adventure for later.” </p><p>It sparks straight into Clarke. </p><p>“Holy fuck,” she whispers, except for the part where she doesn’t whisper at all.</p><p>“Language!” someone hisses, and Clarke finally turns to look. The sniffer is a woman, glaring from a tiny table. Two little round-eyed kids flanking her, their ice cream licking tongues poking out in suspended animation. </p><p>“Your language!” Clarke shoots back, and it can’t make much sense to anyone else, but it still makes the boy behind the counter hoot, and it makes Lexa grab her free hand.</p><p>“Okay! Time to leave,” she says, pulling Clarke sharply towards the door. Clarke offers the sniffer her very own wink before she’s tugged decisively outside and to a bench.</p><p>“I winked at her ironically,” she tells Lexa. “Sexy winks are only for you. Promise.”</p><p>“Lucky me,” Lexa says. Clarke searches for any anger, but all she can hear is fondness. Maybe a little wry. It doesn’t stop the swell of regret. For being too brash, too rash. Too much Clarke goddamn Griffin.</p><p>“Sorry,” she says. “Sorry. I- She- My fault.”</p><p>“I’m sure she deserved it, whatever she did,” Lexa contradicts, and that appears to be final. </p><p>Clarke licks her ice cream cone. After a while, she licks it again. Then she pokes her tongue into it, making little ice cream caves.</p><p>“Clarke,” Lexa says.</p><p>“So,” Clarke says, conversational, arranging her face into something compellingly adorable. “Turns out I’m really full from an amazing dinner, eaten during an amazing date that an amazing woman took me on.”</p><p>Lexa laughs, full and happy, and makes Clarke blissfully dopey all over again. “Come on,” Lexa says, grabbing the cone out of Clarke’s hand during the moment of distraction, and dumping it into the trash. “Let’s go home.”</p><p>Home. Privacy. </p><p>It makes the extra gravity inside Clarke start to wobble. An unbalanced binary system of sharp anxiety in her chest, and zapping heat straight downward. </p><p>“Buh,” she says, then jumps up before Lexa can say anything about that, clapping, resolute. “Yes. Let us. Home.” She grits her teeth, breathes out. “I mean, that sounds good.”</p><p>Lexa’s brow creases a little. Clarke offers a smile. Lexa huffs something small, maybe amused, and they drive back to Clarke’s house.</p><p>“Thank you for letting me take you out.” Lexa tells her, standing in her living room.</p><p>“Why wouldn’t I, sugar mama?” </p><p>“Oh, uh,” Lexa gives an uncharacteristic stutter. “Some people, they prefer to be the ones directing the action.” She scans across Clarke’s face with some kind of palpable weight. </p><p><i>Ah,</i> Clarke thinks. The nerves she’d finally coaxed to lie down hadn’t been over showing Clarke a good time. They’d been about showing Clarke up. Trampling over some sort of puff-chested alpha prerogative.</p><p>Clarke laughs. Lexa jerks, but Clarke’s already darting out a hand. Getting a grip on that tie. Tugging gently, until Lexa is still and attentive. “Sweetheart,” she says, her voice a growl and her eyes steady in a way that makes Lexa’s own eyes widen. “Don’t ever think I’m anything besides proud to be taken out by you. Shown off as yours.”</p><p>“Oh,” Lexa says, her own epiphany. Slowly, she lifts her hands, nudging Clarke’s aside until she can unthread her tie. Holding their gazes locked as her fingers drop to the button of her collar. Stilling when Clarke grabs her hands, pulling them towards herself until Lexa’s palms are loose on her own shoulders.</p><p>Lexa hooks a finger under the strap of her dress, then waits. Looking at Clarke.</p><p>Clarke looks back, and thinks about the woman in the ice cream parlor. The flat and judgemental press of her lips. Telling Clarke all about her place in the world. How it isn’t here, with Lexa, pulling her away from a fruitful, happy, normal life.</p><p>“Oh, fuck her anyway,” Clarke says, resolute. Lexa huffs out a surprised laugh.</p><p>“You are still very strange, sometimes.”</p><p>“Says you,” Clarke says, cupping a hand behind Lexa’s neck, tipping their foreheads together.</p><p>“I’m going to kiss you now,” Lexa murmurs, her breath moving across Clarke’s skin, her chin nudging Clarke’s head into a better angle. The press of her lips, and the slide of her arms as she reaches around to drag Clarke’s zipper down, slipping the dress lower.</p><p>“Oh.” Lexa pulls back, just far enough to run a fingertip down the strap of Clarke’s bra. “You wore them.”</p><p>“Of course,” Clarke tells her. “You gave them to me.” </p><p>Lexa appears to melt into a kind of gooey softness, and Clarke uses the moment to let the dress drop, kicking it away with one foot. She turns, still inside the arms circling her, tugging Lexa’s front against her back. Soft breasts against her shoulder blades, and warm lips against the knob of her spine. Murmuring encouragement as she shuffles them stumbling towards the bedroom.</p><p>She reconfigures them both at the edge of the bed, pushing Lexa down to sit. Lexa looking back up, something almost stunned on her face.</p><p>“You want this?” Clarke asks, cupping that face, running her thumbs along the arching line of that perfect zygomatic bone. Lexa nods. “Words, Lex.”</p><p>“Yes.”</p><p>“Me too,” Clarke tells her, reaching to start threading the buttons of Lexa’s shirt out through their holes. Lexa’s breath hitches, happy encouragement, but it makes Clarke think of their positions, looming over Lexa.</p><p>It’s very probable, thanks to actual exercise and also the heavily overlapping bell curve of genre dimorphism, that Lexa is stronger than Clarke. Still, they’re all the products of the relentless grind of social conditioning, not cool logic. She crawls onto the bed, curling on her side.</p><p>“Hi,” she says. Happy when Lexa chooses to tuck herself into her side.</p><p>“Hello,” Lexa tells her, serious, before giggling. Pressing her lips up under the curve of Clarke’s jaw, indulging them both in a nearly timeless stretch of exploration.</p><p>It’s good. So good. Good when Lexa rolls atop her and presses Clarke’s shoulders onto the mattress. Good when Lexa reaches under to unclasp her bra. Deeply good when Lexa cups the soft fullness of her breast, making pleased noises as she runs a thumb over the nipple. Sort of good when Lexa’s starts running her palm down her midline. </p><p>Her fingers are dancing along the elastic edge of Clarke’s pretty blue underwear when the good pops like a soap bubble.</p><p>“Okay,” Lexa whispers, lips brushing against the skin of Clarke’s chest, “Okay, Clarke. You’re okay.”</p><p>Clarke doesn’t breathe, and she doesn’t loosen the fingers she’s clamped around the wrist of Lexa’s questing hand, and she doesn’t cry. Beside her, above her, Lexa is completely still.</p><p>“I-” she falters. “Lexa, I-”</p><p>Lexa reclaims her hand, gently breaking Clarke’s grip. Shifting around until she’s curled like a comma next to Clarke’s rigid exclamation point. One arm sliding under her neck, the other hand cupping her cheek. A gentle pressure turning her head until they are face to face. </p><p>Lexa leans in to kiss her cheek, her nose, and when Clarke closes her eyes, her eyelids. Clarke shivers, cold or fear she doesn’t know, but it makes Lexa search around with a foot. Dragging the blanket from the chest at the foot of the bed.</p><p>Then they lay there, curled and covered and close, with Lexa stroking her hair. Running fingers through the strands and rubbing behind Clarke’s ears. Over and over, until Clarke‘s breathing is softer. </p><p>“I’m sorry,” she says, because she is. Monumentally goddamn sorry, and monumentally goddamn humiliated. Also, no longer not crying. She crooks an arm over her eyes. “I’m sorry.”</p><p>“Hey,” Lexa murmurs, and Clarke wonders if there's a reality in which she can just flee her own apartment. Because while <i>ovipositor</i> might have a certain workmanlike quality to it, there’s nothing that can save <i>gynecophoral canal</i> from catastrophic unsexiness.</p><p>“I don’t look like you,” Clarke blurts, because sometimes it’s just easier to charge the elephant.</p><p>There’s a pause. “Clarke,” Lexa says, gentle, “I know.” She lets Lexa pull her arm away, and lets her kiss her, deep and soft. Lets herself sink into the sensation of Lexa’s fingertips playing over her face. “Even savages have sex ed,” she teases, tender and sweet.</p><p>“Mm,” Clarke allows relaxing not at all. Tensing more when Lexa pulls back enough to look down. Stroking across her brow, down her nose, tracing her lips. “I haven't done this much,” Clarke says, low as a confession.</p><p>“Much, or not at all?” Lexa asks. </p><p>Clarke thinks of that very first boy, the way the future farmer’s face had twisted with horror once he’d finally worked her pants off. And the beautiful teacher’s assistant, whispering the revenge she’d take if Clarke breathed a word about their activities even as she raked curious eyes and hands across bared skin.</p><p>Around them, the room is utterly still. Brimming with Lexa’s calm waiting, and with the ghost of the woman from the ice cream parlor. Her, and everyone like her. Thinking that Clarke’s place is to die, preferably young. Unloved, and touched only out of twisted curiosity. The room filled with how deeply Clarke had believed the message. </p><p>How, sometimes, the message is still there. </p><p>Except the room is also full of Lexa. Looking down at her with the kind of affection that should not be directed Clarke-wards, but somehow is. “Twice,” Clarke says, and waits.</p><p>“Well,” Lexa says, and astonishingly she smiles, just a little cocky. “That’s nothing I can’t double tonight alone.”</p><p>Clarke gapes, open mouthed and shocked, but Lexa’s grin just grows. “Truly,” she assures, false sobriety. “I’m very willing to help.”</p><p>“Oh my god!” Clarke flails, and Lexa lets her go. Flopping onto her back and dragging most of the blanket with her as she laughs.</p><p>“Your face!” she gasps.</p><p>“Yeah, super funny,” Clarke snaps, because yup, she’s blushing again and it feels kind of like heatstroke.</p><p>“Did you think I’d care how many you have, or haven’t slept with?” Lexa asks, quieter. Curling back onto her side, tucking an arm under her head, attentive.</p><p>“No. Yes. I don’t know.” Clarke says. “I care.” </p><p>“Clarke,” Lexa says, propping herself up to rest a hand on Clarke’s chest.</p><p>“My mom,” Clarke gives her secret quietly. “When I told her about...things, she told me that the world has a legitimate reason to keep people like me ‘engaged in alternate passions.’ That I should concentrate on being a good doctor, and let that give me a happy life.” </p><p>“Clarke,” Lexa says again, wiggling closer, sliding her hand down Clarke’s stomach. Slow, giving her time to stop, to escape, but Clarke doesn’t want to. She wants to lay under Lexa’s partial weight, and listen to her words, and shift her leg out, so Lexa’s hand can cup lightly against her. </p><p>Lexa gives her all those things. Saying low and soft, “All the things we talk about here, in this bed, are ours. And all the things we decide we both want to do, are ours. No one else is invited. Okay?”</p><p>Clarke looks up at her, the way her seriousness shines through some sort of deep affection. She breathes in, and breathes out, and hooks her own thumbs under the elastic of her underwear. Wiggling and shoving until they’re past her feet and off. </p><p>“Ta-da,” she manages, because god forbid Clarke Griffin do anything without a maximum of awkwardness, but Lexa just smiles. </p><p>“Beautiful,” she says, without even looking down.</p><p>Later, when Clarke’s head is thrown back, her hand twisted into the sheet above her head and Lexa’s fingers are a steady coax against the exquisite nerves of her dorsal ridge, she has one brief and snatched moment to remind society to go fuck itself straight off a rolling donut.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0005"><h2>5. Chapter 5</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p><b>Content Advisory:</b> This chapter explores methods other cultures use to control the fertility of female alphas. Click <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25528228/chapters/62370328#chapter_5_endnotes"> for spoiler version.</a></p><p>--<br/></p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“Hello, Clarke.” </p><p>The words gust warm into Clarke’s ear, and roll slow down her spine, lapping out along every nerve.</p><p>She shudders, caught, and wonders vaguely if this is the first sign of Stockholm Syndrome. Then she unlocks, spins, and actually manages to sock the creepy asshole straight in the meat of her stupid bicep. “Mother<i>fucker!”</i> she hisses.</p><p>“Your mom? Sure,” Anya says, quirking her brow and laughing.</p><p>“Wait,” Clarke pauses, hand recocked back for semi-auto punching. “They programmed you to laugh?” </p><p>Anya switches to glowering. Clarke grins with triumph, and drops her hand. “Well, what are you waiting for? Let the sixth weekly Hunger Games begin.”</p><p>“Ha,” Anya says, flat.</p><p>Clarke forces them out of the hospital, and then five brisk blocks to the good coffee shop. Cafeteria coffee is tragic, and Clarke has made it clear she will no longer stand for a place that doesn't understand the deliciously gritty merits of raw sugar.</p><p>She crunches a nodule between her teeth, leaning on an elbow against the high window counter. “Alright, go.” </p><p>“I read an article,” Anya says. “Medical malpractice.”</p><p>Coffee Talk episodes 1x01 and 1x02 had been mostly about Anya staring, and Clarke suddenly understanding exactly how a mouse must feel when occupied by a cobra. Episode 1x03 had been cautious probes about hobbies, but then Anya sprung the multi-episode arc of discussing journal articles she’d ferreted out. </p><p>Last week had been about the perils of being left handed, and Clarke’s statistical chance of dying early. </p><p>Now it’s medical malpratice, and Clarke still has no idea if this she’s being deliberatly and systematically friendship-courted, or this is all just a diabolically subtle long-format torture.</p><p>On consultation, Raven had simply rolled her eyes a lot, and used her cane to stalk away, slowly but with great bodily expression. “What the fuck do I look like, Malcom in the middle?” </p><p>“Do you carry adequate insurance?”</p><p>“The hospital covers me, as part of my contract.”</p><p>“And the clinic?” Anya probes for potential loopholes.</p><p>“Part of the hospital.”</p><p>“Will you need tail insurance?” Anya sallies again, and Clarke really should get over being surprised at the depth of her research.</p><p>“No, it’s an occurrence policy. It’ll cover me no matter how far in the future someone decides to sue me, even if the policy lapses.”</p><p>Anya nods slowly, taking in the information. “And how many people have you accidentally killed?”</p><p>Clarke horks coffee straight out of her nose. Anya smiles, very faintly, into the plastic lid of her cup.</p><p>“Is this a tradition in Trigeda?” Clarke demands, mopping coffee off her shirt with the napkin Anya so kindly hands her. </p><p>“Is what a tradition?”</p><p>“Ritual slow torture of your sister’s girlfriend,” Clarke snaps, moving to her lap.</p><p>It’s the quality of stillness that makes her look up. “What?” she eventually asks, wondering what cultural sinkhole she’d just fallen into.</p><p>“Lexa is not my sister.”</p><p>“What?” Clarke says again.</p><p>“She’s my <i>seken,</i> Anya adds, like it’s some kind of clarification. “Not my sister.”</p><p>“I know, but,” Clarke makes some sort of concentration face. Remembering all the times Lexa had said… and Clarke had thought… </p><p>Anya sighs, a heaving of her chest without much sound.</p><p>“They both start with an ‘s’!” Clarke defends. “They both have two syllables!” </p><p>“Sometimes I contemplate the sheer wonder that you tie your own shoes every morning,” Anya tells her. Clarke tips her cup back, draining the coffee that’s viscous with sugar dregs, and slams it on the counter.</p><p>“This’s been fun. I assume we do the same next week?” she asks, and Anya nods, but Clarke pauses.</p><p>“I suppose you’re going to tell Lexa about all this?”</p><p>“Oh yes,” Anya says. Clarke nods.</p><p>“Cool.”</p><p>She texts Lexa on the way back to the hospital, a warning not to believe everything Anya says. Lexa texts back a long series of emoji faces that seem to indicate either exasperation or skepticism, and Clarke smiles.</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>☆</p>
</div>Clarke has already yanked her shirt over her head, and is working on her lower half when Lexa peeks around the door to the bedroom.<p>“Surprise!” she greets, going very obviously sly, “snookums.”</p><p>“Snookums?” Clarke says, pausing three-quarters out of her pants, all the better to be incredulous with.</p><p>“You prefer savage?” Lexa asks, staring pointedly at the shirt on the floor, and the way one of her shoes is upside down and three feet from its mate. </p><p>“I prefer Clarke,” Clarke says, narrow eyed and suspicious. Kicking the last leg of her pants off.</p><p>“Smelly could also work,” Lexa says, thoughtful, tapping her chin. “My little smelly belly.”</p><p>Clarke glares, but Lexa is immune. “What about simple? My simple little southern snowflake?” A whole rhythm of ‘s’ words, bouncing along at two syllables. </p><p>“Anya,” Clarke sighs, resigned.</p><p>“Anya,” Lexa confirms, unceasingly amused. “My sister. The miracle siblings who share no parents.”</p><p>Clarke squirms.</p><p>“She’s from the East, you know,” Lexa continues. “We aren’t even the same tribe. I mean, those cheekbones alone.” The glee creases deeper around her eyes. </p><p>“I just figured, you know, the luck of the genetic draw,” Clarke mumbles, face reddening.</p><p>“Yes,” Lexa agrees, happily. “If ‘luck’ happens to mean two entirely separate sets of gametes. Now,” Lexa pulls her close by one wrist, pressing her clothed self against Clarke’s mostly naked self, “come here. You’re a goof, and I want to kiss you.”</p><p>Clarke nods. She is a goof. The goofiest goof. </p><p>Lexa kisses her, and she’s soft under it. Letting Lexa press their lips together, opening her mouth for the brush of her tongue. The curve of Lexa’s hip under her hands, and the way Lexa is tilting her head so they can move closer.</p><p>She tries to melt into it all, but Clarke is not a goof, and she only has so much capacity for cowardice. She pulls back. “Trigedasleng isn’t on Rosetta Stone or Duolingo.” </p><p>“Pardon?” The kissing haze fades from Lexa’s eyes. Clarke sighs.</p><p>“I’ve been trying to learn, trying to be something besides a shitty American, but it’s not on any of the language apps. So I thought maybe Wikipedia, at least for an intro course, but the only stuff there is pure colonial era Heart of Darkness crap about ethnic tensions and coup d’etats, like your country isn’t filled with people who have birthdays and actual brains. So I tried the library, but the only book was an ethnography by a shockingly racist armchair anthropologist from 1937 who I don’t think ever actually set foot in Trigeda. I tried all that, but I struck out, because I’m a shitty, smelly, savage American.”</p><p>“Wow,” Lexa says. Clarke hunches her shoulders in.</p><p>“You’re not a shitty American,” Lexa tells her. “Trust me,” she adds when Clarke’s face twits. “I’ve met a few of them.”</p><p>“You have nightmares,” Clarke says, and Lexa’s face goes still. “It’s nothing, like, dramatic. You don’t thrash and moan like some overwrought fanfic, but I can tell.”</p><p>“Everyone has nightmares, sometimes,” Lexa says.</p><p>“Sure, but you don’t talk about yours, and I don’t know if I’m allowed to ask. I don’t know if they’re just about being naked in public, or whatever prosaic bullshit, or...something else.”</p><p>“They are often about clowns.” Lexa says, and it actually barks a laugh out of Clarke, but it’s strained.</p><p>“I don’t— I don’t want to hurt you, Lex. You never talk, and I don’t know if I’m allowed to ask.” </p><p>“You’re allowed to ask, Clarke. I’m sorry I made you feel like you couldn’t.”</p><p>“You should probably at least tell me what <i>seken</i> means. Anya is already insufferable.”</p><p>“The literal translation is second, but it means…” Lexa hums, searching. “It means apprentice, or maybe ward. I went to Polis when I was twelve, and Anya chose me out of all 300 of my cohort.”</p><p>“Oh,” Clarke goes a little gooey, stuck on the scene. “That is adorable. You standing all surly with dirt on your face, and Anya swooping in to choose you.” </p><p>Lexa’s shoulders unfurl back open. She doesn’t laugh, but her eyes are bright. “Imagine her face at such sentiment.”</p><p>“Good,” Clarke says, clapping her hands together decisively. “This is good progress, and you are very pretty, and I was wondering if I could get dressed now? It’s kind of cold.”</p><p>Lexa bustles Clarke into her bedroom, dressing her in a shirt and soft sweats. Sitting with her at the kitchen table as they eat reheated pasta. Telling Clarke about the food market in Polis, and how her first McDonalds cheeseburger was from a pile of them on a table at a refugee center after a fourteen hour flight.</p><p>“Revolting,” she summarizes, and Clarke gasps with deep betrayal. </p><p>“Now you really do sound like an American.”</p><p>It doesn’t sound like a complement, but “just like warm apple pie, babe,” Clarke tells her with a wink.</p><p>Later, when they are curled in bed with Lexa’s head on Clarke’s chest, she tells her about when the genocide erupted in the capital city. How they had been frogs in a pot, and how it had all exploded so suddenly, the night around them filling with blood and death. </p><p>Clarke runs her fingers through the heavy mass of Lexa’s curls, and listens to how Anya had led them both towards the border. Each with their passports stowed in their pocket, a toothbrush rolled inside a spare shirt.</p>
<hr/><p>“Griffin. Got one for you.”</p><p>“Yeah,” Clarke grunts, typing more into the computer. Her boss might be her boss, but he can wait until she finishes the sentence.</p><p>“Clarke,” the physician-in-chief says. Clarke looks up into his pinched, unhappy face. </p><p>“Okay.” She stands.</p><p>The girl is laying on an ER bed, already transferred over from the ambulance gurney, her groin swaddled in hemorrhage pads. Her eyes wide and full of shock. Pale from blood loss, maybe complicated by dehydration.</p><p>“Shit,” Clarke mumbles.</p><p>“There’s an SA nurse coming down,” her boss tells her. “But she’s a beta, and I’m a male.” He doesn’t have to fill in the rest. That Clarke is alpha, and female, and that she’s currently the only physician in the hospital that falls into those requirements. </p><p>Clarke spares one second of hatred for him, and the hospital, and the world. “Give me the rundown,” is what she allows out of her mouth.</p><p>“Eleven year old female alpha, four days post what appears to be castration infibulation.”</p><p>Clarke blinks fast, and does not let her face shift.</p><p>“Patient’s father called emergency services. He reported the procedure was done at home, by a non-medical practitioner. Bleeding originally controlled using a slurry of egg whites and sugar, along with loose stitching and pressure applied by tying the patients legs together. Bleeding was controlled until today, when the patient began thrashing after hearing the doorbell ring. Father reported the patient feared a return of the practitioner.</p><p>The ambo crew found a laceration on the left inner thigh, and severe lacerations to the genitals, consistent with the spermatozoa pouches being either lacerated or removed. They applied Celox bandages in the field, successfully controlling the bleeding. They also ran two lines, and began fluids.”</p><p>“The women who do the cutting tell the families to limit water. To keep urine out of the wound.” Clarke fills in, flat and factual. Her boss shifts, but Clarke just calls the chart up on her tablet.</p><p>The little girl is Fatima. Last week her female relatives had held her down, and let an old wise woman cut her.</p><p>“Hi,” Clarke says gently once she’s at the bedside, holding a pair of gloves but not pulling them on. On the plastic covered mattress, Fatima is glassy eyed with fear and shock, pale and breathing too fast. “My name is Clarke. I’m a doctor, and I’m here to help you.”</p><p>The curtain hushes as someone enters, halting next to Clarke. The girl shivers. </p><p>“This is Ash.” Clarke introduces the SA nurse. “She’s here to help both of us. Ash, this is Fatima.”</p><p>“Hello, Fatima,” Ash says, pulling her own gloves on. She’s petite and smiling, highly trained and highly competent, and Clarke is deeply grateful to see her.</p><p>“I know this is pretty scary, and I think we should take care of that first. I’m going to give you a medicine that will help you relax. Alright?”</p><p>Fatima gives them a microcosm of a nod, and Ash draws the murmured dosages of Fentanyl and Ativan into a syringe. She holds the barrel up. “I’m going to use the tube in your arm, so no needles.” </p><p>She reaches slowly for the port, pushing the needle in and depressing the plunger. Slowly, Fatima’s eyelids droop, until she’s splayed flat and open on the exam bed.</p><p>“Alright,” Clarke says to Ash once the drugs have truly taken hold. “Let’s start at the feet, and work our way up.” Ash nods, and Clarke submerges into the aftermath of violence.</p><p>The friction burns around the ankles, and the matching loops around the upper thighs from the bindings used to butterfly the legs open. </p><p>The smudge of finger shaped bruises at calf, knee, thigh, and hips.</p><p>A tetanus shot, and antibiotics run alongside the fluids. </p><p>Waiting for the portable x-ray, the tech taking hip and femur shots, to make sure the hands that had pressed so hard hadn’t cracked anything. The films come back clear, and Clarke pulls in a deep breath, letting it trickle out slow. “Ready?” She asks Ash, who nods back.</p><p>Debriding fresh margins and so she can stitch closed the thigh wound. Probably from the razor slipping as the girl fought.</p><p>Clarke pulls back the hemorrhage pads that the ambo crew had packed into the girl’s groin, careful not to disrupt the new clots. Looking at where expectation, and tradition, and sexual control have been incised into flesh. </p><p>“Urinary sphincter intact,” Clarke says. “Looks like the dorsal ridge has been excised, and the spermatozoa pouches have been removed. That’s probably when they nicked the pudendal artery.”</p><p>“Well, there is one golden lining,” Ash says, once they’re back outside the room, dealing with paperwork and plastic surgery consults. Clarke looks up at her. “She isn’t incontinent.” </p><p>Clarke makes an inarticulate snorting noise, trying too late to press it down with the back of her forearm. “Oh, god,” she says, horrified and laughing.</p><p>“Good to work with you, Dr. Griffin,” Ash tells her, shoes squeaking down the hallway. Clarke leans her head back against the wall, and breathes deep, black humor roiling inside her.</p><p>When she returns to the exam room, a hospital cop is leaning in the corner and a man is sitting by the bedside, both his hands wrapped around one of the girl’s smaller ones.</p><p>“I told her not to,” he says, looking up. The stark black and white check of his shirt marking out his sect. “My wife. I told her that I forbid it, but I was gone on a business trip, and she told me it was a woman’s business.” A tear trickles down his cheek, but he makes no move to wipe it away. “What happens next?” He asks.</p><p>Clarke cuts a look at the police officer, but he just shrugs. “I’ve put in a consultation for reconstructive surgery. They’ll attempt to repair the cosmetic damage, but the dorsal ridge and sperm pouches are gone, and the nerve may have been nicked. She’ll never evert, and there will probably be other repercussions on sexual function.”</p><p>He swallows. “My wife said it had to be done. That she would become an animal if we didn’t. That it was expected, and everyone would shun her, shun our family if we didn’t.” He looks back down at his daughter, releasing one hand to run a finger along her temple. “My little girl.”</p><p>“I’m very sorry,” Clarke says, not sure if it’s for him, or for his daughter. Next to the bed, the man’s shoulders hitch silently.</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>☆</p>
</div><p>Clarke leans her forehead against the door. This is a terrible, horrible, incredibly stupid idea. She needs to go to bed, in her own apartment and—</p><p>Lexa jerks the door open. Clarke pitches through with a yelp. Flailing forward a couple stumbling steps before getting her balance back.</p><p>Lexa looks at her. Clarke looks at the doorknob, still in Lexa’s hand. “How did you know to do that?”</p><p>“Doorbell camera,” Lexa tells her. Clarke nods a few times, realizes she is nodding too much, and stops.</p><p>“Flowers?” She offers the bouquet. Lexa grabs her wrist instead, towing her further inside. From there, Clarke is subjected to an impressively efficient sort of domestic tranquility. </p><p>Lexa propping her against a wall as she warms up the shower. Sitting on the closed lid of the toilet as Clarke soaps and shampoos the hospital smell off herself. Standing quietly as Lexa dries her off with a towel and dresses her in sleep clothes that have all been warmed in the dryer. Being led to the coffee table, decorated by a steaming pizza box that Clarke already anticipates will fill her belly with warmth and carbohydrates. </p><p>“We’re watching a physics documentary on string theory,” Lexa tells her, prim. “And we’re eating off plates.”</p><p>“It’s cute when you’re all nerdy.” Clarke obligingly drops the pizza slice she’d been balancing one-handed onto the plate Lexa’s shoving at her. </p><p>“I’m not nerdy, Clarke. I’m simply interested in the world.” She frowns, displeased at Clarke’s grin. Passive aggressively clicking the documentary to life. Clarke surreptitiously wipes at the pepperoni grease that had dribbled unnoticed onto her borrowed sleep pants.</p><p>Clarke lasts nearly an hour. Listed sideways and tucked under Lexa’s chin in a post-pizza haze, a hand idly soothing across her back and the television droning about incomprehensible things.</p><p>“<i>Hodness,</i>” Lexa whispers near her ear when Clarke shudders in flashback. And sure, Clarke might still suck at Trigedasleng, but she’s pretty certain she knows what love sounds like.</p><p>She crawls up Lexa’s torso, until she can press her face into the dark curve of Lexa’s neck. “I had a bad day,” she says, trying to explain. Trying to be less miserable, or pathetic, or just both at once.</p><p>“And now you’re home, and I have you,” Lexa says. Clarke melts against her.</p><p>“Home,” she mumbles, and crashes into an emotionally overwrought sleep approximately 45 seconds later.</p><p>Somehow, and there is no actual memory of this, she ends up in Lexa’s bed. Waking to stretch, and blink sleepily at the surprising venue.</p><p>“It’s morning,” Clarke announces, like maybe the universe needed to know. Next to her, the lump of Lexa does not move. </p><p>Clarke peels the blanket back. Lexa slits one eye to glare. </p><p>“Grumpy,” Clarke declares happily, and flattens her nose down. Lexa flails, slapping at Clarke’s shoulders, until Clarke scoops her up against her chest.</p><p>“I loathe you,” Lexa says, dark, but a little muffled from being squashed.</p><p>“<i>Ai hod yu in,</i>” Clarke murmurs, and watches Lexa tip her head towards it, like a flower towards light.</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>☆</p>
</div><p>Clarke is eating chips at the table when Lexa lets herself back through the door. Half heartedly wiping at the grease left on the keyboard as a pair of office appropriate heels click towards the bedroom.</p><p>“Slob,” Lexa murmurs in her ear a few minutes later, hanging over Clarke’s shoulder,  changed into soft clothes. “What are you reading?”</p><p>“Um,” Clarke hedges, but Lexa’s already squinting at the title of the article. <i>The Origin of Species: Hypothesis on The Parallel Evolution of Homo Sapien Hellenic and Homo Sapien Sapien.</i></p><p>Lexa clicks the laptop closed, a sharp snap.</p><p>“I was reading that?” Clarke points out, a little hesitant, but Lexa shakes her head.</p><p>“No.”</p><p>“Wait.” Clarke narrows her eyes. “Are you negating the simple past tense <i>I was reading that</i>, or the future perfect progressive, <i>I will be reading that</i>?”</p><p>“Nerd,” Lexa teases, yanking her shirt off and sliding in to straddle Clarke’s lap. Using her ears as handles to smush Clarke’s face into her cleavage.</p><p>“Why?” Clarke asks, a little muffled.</p><p>“Boobs,” Lexa points out, smushing a tiny bit harder, until breathing in becomes questionable.</p><p>“Boobs.” Clarke sighs, breathing out instead.</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>☆</p>
</div><p>“Don’t read that stuff.” Lexa’s voice fills the quiet darkness of the bedroom. Bodies curled together, skin cooling. Clarke starts to wrinkle her brow down, but gives it up. She knows what Lexa is telling her.</p><p>“Gotta stay on top of the bullshit,” she gives the justification she uses in her own mind. Finding the articles, and inviting their words inside. Forewarned, forearmed. </p><p>Lexa twists out of being the front spoon, flopping around to face Clarke with concern in the little creases around her eyes. “They hurt you. You read them to hurt yourself.”</p><p>“Maybe,” Clarke admits. How it’s like pressing on a cold sore, the nearly welcome sting. Lexa rolls to her back, pulling Clarke to rest on her chest. </p><p>“You’re not lesser, Clarke. You’re not wrong.”</p><p>“I know,” Clarke says. </p><p>Most of the time it’s true.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p><b>Content Advisory - Spoiler Version:</b> Clarke treats a 11 year old victim of infibulation (female genital cutting). </p><p>In the real world, the practice of FGC has many co-morbidities that both encourage, and suppress the tradition. I did my best to remain faithful to the societal pressures that underpin FGC in the real world, while changing the procedure to deal with the realities of alpha biology. </p><p>Primary research references were: <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3783896/">Heath Care Women International - A Tradition in Transition</a>, and Deutsche Welle - <a href="https://www.dw.com/en/female-genital-mutilation-why-do-so-many-girls-still-face-fgm-a-52265630/a-52265630"> Why Do So Many Girls Still Face FGM?</a></p><p>(click the "Top" button to return to the beginning of the chapter)<br/></p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0006"><h2>6. Chapter 6</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p><b><s>Quick note</s> Long-Ass Note on A/B/O mechanics for this world:</b> </p><p><b>Q.</b> What's in Clarke's pants?  </p><p><b>A.</b> In an unexcited state, when Clarke's just watching TV or taking the trash out as directed by Lexa, "must we live like this, Clarke, <i>really,</i>" her genitals are in storage mode. This means pulled inside the body, and kept inside-out to form a canal. </p><p>During regular sex, the genitals stay inverted, and the canal functions much like a vagina - it lubricates, is available for penetration (if the owner is into that), and there's a ridge of skin that's rich in nerve endings just like a clitoris. In this mode, orgasms do not produce reproductive material.</p><p>During sex with an omega who is producing estrus pheromones (aka: in heat), Clarke's genitals go into active mode. The inside-out canal engorges, and becomes a phallus capable of penetration. The nerve rich and self-lubricating skin that lined the canal is now the surface of the phallus, still lubricating, and still sensitive to touch. In this mode, orgasms <span class="u">do</span> result in the ejaculation of reproductive material.<br/>--<br/><b>Q:</b> Why are female alphas discriminated against?</p><p><b>A:</b> As part of my research for this fic, I created a Punnett square that captured all possible genotypes for both sex and A/B/O genre (you can look at it by <a href="https://imgur.com/aDkc7Aa">clicking here</a> ). The statistics showed a species that would produce far more females than males. If left unchecked, a species with both sex and genre would slowly become 100% female, because f/f pairings <i>cannot</i> result in male offspring because there ain't no Y chromosome. </p><p>In my headcannon, Nature itself has created some sort of balance that ensures the population remains roughly 50/50 male and female.  Much like our real world Nature keeps adult gender ratios 50/50 despite the fact that the ratio at birth is biased towards males. I don't know the exact mechanism that my world's Nature uses to keep gender ratios equal, I just know it's there. Please forgive this humble authour a little bit of handwaving.</p><p>HOWEVER, just like in our world, the power holders in Clarke's world have created societal structures that tend to justify their own power. In our world, male power perpetuates male power, using a whole slew of bullshit arguments - Gods, size difference, testosterone, etc. In Clarke's world, male alphas and betas perpetuate the power of male alphas and betas, particularly when it comes to access to omegas. Depending on the culture, female alphas are selectively aborted, subject to genital mutilation, or simply encouraged towards dangerous, low paying, low status careers.<br/>--<br/><b>Conlang Advisory:</b> I made up a word. "Faa," means the male parent who birthed.<br/>--<br/></p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“The plan,” Lexa says, and slaps a map down onto the surface of the table.</p><p>They are all sitting around it, the remains of dinner shunted to the side. Raven leans over to examine the map, elbows on the table, flopped precariously forward due to her ass being planted so firmly in Anya’s lap.</p><p>“Um,” Clarke says. Craning to look at what appears to be a short antemeridian trackline done in blue highlighter, and a longer postmeridian in green. Suggested meal times noted in purple sharpie.</p><p>“Ambitious,” Raven says. </p><p>“<i>Ummm,</i>” Clarke tries again. From behind Raven’s back, Anya smirks at her.</p><p>“Preliminary engagement only,” Lexa warns. “It might need some refinement.” </p><p>Raven frowns a little and nods, eyes tracking along.</p><p>“It’s my birthday,” Clarke points out. Lexa gropes around until she finds Clarke’s knee, patting vaguely.</p><p>“Of course, babe.”</p><p>“I should pick the route,” Clarke presses, but the final phonemes lift into something that sounds a lot like a question.</p><p>“Look here, though.” Raven’s finger traces the footpath outlined on the map. “We could do a loop-the-loop here, go past this monstrosity twice before it gets stupid crowded.”</p><p>“I thought of that, yes,” a line shows up between Lexa’s brows. “But the backtrack route allows for both corn dogs and ice cream.” She hesitates, and continues. “I may have a way to minimize wait times, too.”</p><p>Raven looks intrigued, but Clarke slumps down in her chair, arms crossed. Anya gives her another look, one eyebrow raised significantly. </p><p>“At least I’m going down fighting, you fucking house cat,” Clarke says. </p><p>Anya looks significantly downwards, at how her hands are gripping a lap full of warm and willing, keeping Raven from sliding right off as she leans further and further across the table, then at Clarke’s empty lap.</p><p>Clarke sticks her tongue out.</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>☆</p>
</div><p>They arrive at the park ten minutes before opening, and the line is already snaking between the rat maze barriers. Clarke groans, her third eye opening to see a hot day full of waiting in long lines, concurrent with minimal snacks.</p><p>“Put your hat on,” Lexa says, tugging Clarke tangential to the long line. </p><p>“What?” she asks, confused by the change in direction. Also, possibly, <i>maybe</i> hoping to avoid the hat. Lexa shakes her elbow, no-nonsense. </p><p>“Put your hat on. You don’t have any melanin.”</p><p>“I’m wearing sunscreen, and Raven doesn’t have to wear a hat.”</p><p>“Raven actually possess melanin, and will survive ten minutes without a hat.” She halts, squinting suspiciously. “Nor shall you follow Raven onto any bridges. Ever.”</p><p>“I’m not certain I enjoy the implication of what you’re saying,” Clarkes says, letting Lexa resume her tugging, vectoring them towards a much shorter line. Clarke reads the sign emblazoned over it, and feels excitement spur through her.</p><p>“Wait.” Lexa looks over, eyes alight, and maybe Clarke should be embarrassed about the little toe bounce she does. Except, no. This is fucking awesome. “Really?” she asks.</p><p>“Happy birthday,” Lexa tells her. Full of that soft joy that is so quintessentially Lexa. Showing, but never showy. She steps to the counter, like they’re expected. Which they must be, given how the man behind the counter nods when she gives her name, handing over a bulky envelope.</p><p>“Please let any park employee know if you need anything,” he says.</p><p>“Of course. Thank you,” Lexa gives him a smile, and brings the envelope back over.</p><p>“Wrist,” she says, snapping a bracelet closed around what Clarke holds out. “And this,” Lexa hands her an egg shaped pod.</p><p>Clarke has seen these things on the internet, but never in person. Fast passes, food <i>and</i> rides are not for people who still have $120,000 in student loans. “Wow,” she breaths, tracing the edge of the wristband.</p><p>“Too much?” Lexa asks, her shoulders hunching with a creeping tension, holding an envelope that still contains over a month’s worth of grocery money in wrist bands and access passes.</p><p>“Hey,” Clarke says back, soft. She loves that she’s the one who gets to understand, and she loves that she gets to be the one to soothe it. “No, baby. It’s amazingly thoughtful to me, and generous to our friends.”</p><p>Lexa blinks at her, something furrowing into her brow, then smoothing over.</p><p>“Ahem,” a voice breaks in. Raven, wrist out. “You guys can eye-bang each other later. Right now is for giving Raven her treats.” Lexa huffs something that’s not quite a laugh, rooting out another set of wristband and pod. “Ha!” Raven wraps the wristband into place. “And don’t expect any sexual favors from me.”</p><p>“Perish the thought,” Lexa mutters, and ushers them all through a side gate. Clarke looks back at the people still lined up between the barriers, and grins.</p><p>Inside, Raven gives a sharp sideways glance towards a dark alcove, jumbled with strollers and wheelchairs, but Anya just saunters past with her hands in her pockets, Lexa craned back to look doubtfully at a loop of roller coaster rising above them. Clarke watches Raven look resolutely away. </p><p>“Funnel cake!” Clarke announces, and even the cyborg winces.</p><p>“Or, considering it's still only 10 o’clock, we could have fancy coffee drinks.” Lexa points at the map she’s unfolded from her pocket. The morning’s path radiating out from the twice circled coffee stand symbol. </p><p>“Coffee now, funnel cake later,” Clarke declares. Lexa rolls her eyes, but also kisses her cheek and rattles her drink order off perfectly. </p><p>Clarke pops the top when Lexa hands it to her, licking a deep groove up the small Matterhorn of whipped cream, staring directly into Anya’s eyes. Anya glares right back.</p><p>“Stop that,” Lexa scolds, prodding Clarke in the shoulder. Adding, “This way,” and pointing towards the rightward path. “The battering ram, and then the castle.”</p><p>“God forbid we bend sinister,” Clarke mutters looking in the opposite direction towards the arching rails of a rollercoaster. Lexa laces their fingers together.</p><p>“You can’t argue with the invariant right, Clarke. It’s brain chemistry.” Clarke huffs, letting her feet move, and Lexa grins. “It’s time to stop worrying and love the map, Clarke. It’s going to give you a very happy ending.”</p><p>“Oh,” Clarke gives her a particular look, “I thought that was happening tonight, at home.”</p><p>Behind them, Raven chokes on her coffee.</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>☆</p>
</div><p>“Pirate boat!” Clarke warbles, shoving her pod towards the attendant, leading them towards the front of the ride. Beside her, Lexa grips down hard on the padded restraint, mumbling under her breath. Low, like a mantra.</p><p>It speeds up a little during the first moment of anti-gravity, but Clarke’s too busy whooping along with all the kids to pick out the words. Something about safety inspections, maybe.</p><p>“Funnel cake?” Clarke asks once they’ve all staggered off. Raven says something about one track minds that Clarke chooses not to hear.</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>☆</p>
</div><p>They’re two stops into the afternoon trackline when Raven’s foot drags, making her grunt and stagger. Clarke starts to dart forward, but Anya’s hand is already under her armpit, steadying.</p><p>Raven takes a deep breath, nodding a thanks as she moves herself off the hand. Anya frowns, but she lets go.</p><p>“Teacups,” Lexa says, studying the map, but Clarke flaps a dismissive hand. </p><p>“Boring. Skip.” Lexa looks up. Her fingers clutch down on the map. Eyes going wide and wanting. Lower lip poking out just a millimeter. “Yay, Teacups. So fun. Much enjoy,” Clarke says quickly, fishing her pod out.</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>☆</p>
</div><p>“It’s a major fucking food group, shut up all of you,” Clarke says around a crispy, flaky, delicious curl of fried dough. Anya snorts. Lexa looks over at the way Da Vinci’s cradle looms in the foreground, and shudders.</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>☆</p>
</div><p>“No,” Lexa says with a low horror, right when the floor under the coaster train drops away.</p><p>It’s named The Griffon, which Clarke Griffin finds both personally satisfying and deeply correct. Tallest and fastest drop coaster in the world, back when it opened. It has drifted to 33rd best over the years, but it’s still a 200-foot drop, at nearly 70 miles per hour. </p><p>Clarke leans around the shoulder restraints, peering at Lexa as best she can. </p><p>“No!” Lexa says vehemently, knuckles gripped white on the restraint handles right as the train jerks forward. Ratcheting up the chain lift hill, then gravity is pressing everyone forward against their chest restraints as the cars slide over the 90 degree bend. Suspended.</p><p>The brake opens.</p><p>The train falls.</p><p>Clarke flies.</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>☆</p>
</div><p>Lexa is out of the seat the instant the attendant clicks the restraints free, striding off the platform and out the gate with head high and shoulders square. “Clarke,” she says once they’ve grouped back together.</p><p>“Yes?” Clarke says, with maybe a little trepidation. Lexa looks back at her, blinking fast.</p><p>“I want to ride the teacups again. Then I want to take the tram to the petting zoo, and I want to pet the llamas.”</p><p>“Yeah,” Clarke says, desperate force of will keeping the smile off her face. “Yeah, I think we should do that.”</p><p>“I might also pet the goats,” Lexa says, fierce.</p><p>Clarke finds it judicious to simply nod.</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>☆</p>
</div><p>Raven’s knee buckles just outside the fence surrounding the food booths. The hastily modified-to-pet-goats-<i>now</i> trackline depositing them back at the long picnic tables in time for an afternoon snack.</p><p>Anya lunges, but she’s far enough that all she can do is catch the back of Raven’s shirt as she goes down hard.</p><p>“Ho!” A bespeckled faa squaks, yanking two small children sideways to avoid their sudden obstruction. Careening into the more solidly built dad, who grunts and throws his arms out to halt his tumbling family.</p><p>After that is a lot of awkward staring. Clarke, and Lexa, and the men, and the kids. The men seem somewhere on the binary between embarrassed and horrified. The bigger kid, who’s still ridiculously tiny, sucks on two middle fingers with a certain air of ennui over the mysteries of adults, but the smaller one is round eyed and open mouthed.</p><p>“Should I get someone?” the dad asks, hesitant, his hands on his husband’s shoulders, pulling his family into the circle of his height. </p><p>“Go away,” Anya says, clipped and short. Her spine towards the slow flow of people, parting them around where Raven is curled. </p><p>On the ground, Raven’s eyes are screwed shut, lips skimmed back. Humiliation, and pain, and how they twist in Clarke’s own chest.</p><p>“Thank you for your concern,” Lexa cuts in, giving the men a smile, “but we are okay.” </p><p>Anya leans forward, speaking low and smooth into Raven’s ear. The dad gives Lexa a doubtful look, but Lexa gives him a firm one back. </p><p>“Really.” Lexa’s smile goes a little stale. </p><p>The man shrugs, and starts herding his family away, the bigger kid craning back around the adults’ legs. “We don’t stare,” the faa chastises, prodding forward. “It’s too loud here, and she needs some help from her friends.”</p><p>Clarke feels that in her chest, too. “She’s not autistic,” she bellows. Then winces, rushing to add, “Not that it would matter!”</p><p>The men stiffen, and start walking faster. Clarke opens her mouth again, but Lexa clamps a hand around her wrist. “There’s a fine art to quitting while you’re behind. And besides,” she jerks her head towards the others.</p><p>Anya, still crouched. Her fingers on Raven’s cheek, like she’s closing a circuit. Keeping Raven’s eyes wide on her own, and her breath in the rise and fall of the sounds. Until Raven reaches up and touches her hand. </p><p>Anya sits back on her heels. Raven rolls onto her back, squinting against the sun.</p><p>“Give me your hat,” Anya sticks up a hand.</p><p>“Ha!” Clarke says, handing it over. Anya puts it over Raven’s face, then shifts to sit cross-legged by Raven’s shoulder.</p><p>“Thirty minutes,” she says without looking up. “We will meet you at the picnic tables.”</p><p>Clarke’s chest is getting a full workout today, filling with the hot impulse that Raven is <i>hers.</i> It’s unworthy. More, it’s inaccurate. She shoves it away, smiling over at Lexa. “Time for those veggie kebabs,” she announces. </p><p>Lexa gives her a startled look.</p><p>“What?”</p><p>Slowly, Lexa reaches up, pressing the back of her hand against Clarke’s forehead. Clarke sucks in an offended gasp, swatting the hand away.</p><p>“I’m a doctor, Lexa. I know it can’t be all funnel cakes, all the time.”</p><p>“Of course,” Lexa says, far too agreeable.</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>☆</p>
</div><p>“What was Anya saying?” Clarke asks, standing in a slowly shuffling line for the snack stand. The caramelized smell of grilling wafting around them as Lexa looks over.</p><p>“A leader’s prayer,” she says, voice going halting as she translates on the fly. “Oh earth, let me be worthy. Oh mothers, let me be wise. Oh fathers, let me be strong.”</p><p>Clarke hums, leaning into Lexa as they shuffle slowly forward, wondering at her life. How she came to be standing next to someone who grew up to venerate the life of earth, and water, and the watchful spirit of her ancestors.</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>☆</p>
</div><p>They return, bearing oversized hot dog trays full of kebabs, to find an argument in progress. The contenders straddling a picnic bench to square off. Anya impassive. Raven looking out across the crowd. Between them, a small ziplock bag.</p><p>It holds one oblong yellow pill, one incongruously cheerful looking red gummy bear, and, somehow for being so small, all of Raven’s rage. Her jaw bunched, her fists curled at the ends of her crossed arms. </p><p>“Er,” Clarke says, hesitating, but everyone ignores her. Lexa to sit and begin parsing out food, Raven and Anya to continue whatever they’d started. </p><p>“<i>Reivon,</i>" Anya says. It makes Raven scoff, but whatever modulation she’s put into the carrierwave of the single world, it doesn’t translate past their bubble.</p><p>“You fucking take it then, since you’re so keen.”</p><p>“Surely,” Anya says, so mild it can’t possibly do anything except infuriate Raven more. “That will solve all problems. I’ll be high, and you will still be a cripple.”</p><p>Raven’s head snaps around, and Clarke finds her poor chest frozen. Breath caught against the explosion, but Anya doesn’t seem to fear the storm. “You think it’s unfair, but fairness is not the right measure. I am blond. Clarke is ridiculous. You have nerve damage. Facts are not fair, or unfair. They just are.”</p><p>“Hey,” Clarke protests, but Raven laughs, sharp and mean. </p><p>“Blond? That’s your comparison? My leg, and your <i>hair color</i>”</p><p>“Prized, by certain people in the camps,” Anya says. Beside Clarke, Lexa goes rigid, silent and utterly still. “Until they learned I could make anything into a weapon.” She prods the little bag. “This is your weapon.”</p><p>Raven draws in a deep breath, letting it trickle out slow. She does it again. Then she slowly uncrumples a fist. Bypassing the gummy in favor of teasing the pill out. Dry swallowing, then stretching her mouth open wide enough for Anya to see her gullet. </p><p>She grins, still sharp edged. Anya’s answering smile, just like Lexa’s, is far more a look in her eyes than a motion of her lips. Somehow, it breaks the facets of Raven’s anger. </p><p>“You’re such an asshole,” she says, kicking her good foot out gently against Anya’s shin, unbearably fond. Anya’s eyes glitter.</p><p>“Kebab?” Clarke offers over one of the trays.</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>☆</p>
</div><p>They ride the perimeter train on a full loop, then the skyway tram, and then the river cruise. Just like real tourists, talking too loud and flinging themselves bodily across the aisle to exclaim at exotic sights.</p><p>Clarke rides the swing rides happily enough, but grumbles when they magically find themselves in front of the teacups a-fucking-gain. It’s okay, though. Raven’s able to join them despite the heavy-duty painkillers, and Lexa’s laughing as they spin.</p><p>Then, <i>then</i>, they are standing in front of the Loch Ness Monster. Rising yellow and ribbed above them. “The world’s only double interlocking loop roller coaster,” Clarke tells them. “Two drops, plus a helix tunnel. One hundred fourteen feet, total height.”</p><p>Lexa makes a meeping sort of noise, but Raven just grins. Rubbing her nose slowly, pupils constricted. “No fucking way, Griffin. Not with a mouse, or in a house. Not with a fox, or in a box.”</p><p>“Not even Anya’s?” Lexa asks. “Hm,” she adds when they all blink at her, pleased with herself. </p><p>“I didn’t know you could make jokes,” Clarke says, distracted by sudden wonderment. Lexa gives her a flat-eyed look.</p><p>“You and me then,” Clarke says, grinning at her girlfriend and reaching for Anya’s elbow. Anya sighs, loudly, as she’s towed away.</p><p>She sighs even louder when Clarke yanks them to a halt, around the corner, but far from the head of the massive line. “Why?” Is all she asks.</p><p>“I just want to go on record saying that I think you are, not exaggerating, insane, and that I have no idea what a Trikru wedding looks like, but, swear to god, so help me, if I end up having to to eat mare’s heart or monkey brains without at least a courtesy warning, I will have my revenge.” Clarke shakes the elbow she’s still holding, to show she’s serious. “Got it?”</p><p>“For the record, I partially loathe you most of the time, and if you speak to Raven about this <i>entirely hypothetical</i> proposal I will make your life somehow unbearable,” Anya tells her, equally serious.</p><p>“How?” Clarke counters.</p><p>“How so ever I happen to choose,” Anya says, with absolute conviction. Clarke purses her lips, then nods. </p><p>“I agree to those terms.” </p><p>“Thrilling,” Anya says, sighing all over again as Clarke resumes pulling her towards the loading gate. </p><p>They chose seats at the front, special pod status still going strong. When Clarke looks over, after the second loop and diving into an inversion, Anya’s face is full of fierce joy.</p><p>They emerge three consecutive rides later. “You’re still alive,” Lexa says, a little too surprised to be truly droll.</p><p>“Of course, worrywart. The safety inspections for- for- wait, did you mean I survived the coaster, or Anya?”</p><p>“Sure,” Lexa says, still far too agreeable. </p><p>Raven laughs, letting Anya pull her up from the park bench she’d claimed. Balancing on one leg as Anya pivots, clambering onto her back for the proffered piggyback ride. Letting Anya settle the weight with a bounce, thumbing her one useful heel against a convenient thigh. “Giddyup!”</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>☆</p>
</div><p>Clarke pokes at her neck as they trudge back to the car. The soft summer night feeling cold, her skin mysteriously tight. Beside her, Lexa makes a flat little noise of having “warned you, <i>Clarke.</i> What did you think would happen?” Clarke chooses not to acknowledge.</p><p>They’ve ridden all the rides, and eaten all the things, and watched fireworks from a little grassy knoll. She’s not about to let a little sunburn waylay her from basking in the rosy glow.</p><p>They find the car, Anya fishing the keys out of her pocket, ceremoniously giving Raven shotgun. Nominally to stretch her leg out, not that Clarke is going to argue with either her friend’s comfort, or with sitting squashed against Lexa. Soaking in the way Lexa leans her head on Clarke’s shoulder, and the way her scent rises. Warm from a day spent outside, and turning sweet. </p><p>In two more days, it will go flat, blanked out by the suppressors, but right now is right now. Clarke hums happily to herself, pressing a kiss to the side of Lexa’s head.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0007"><h2>7. Chapter 7</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p><b>Content Advisory:</b> Discussion of sexual assault, and underaged grooming. Stays at the theoretical level; nothing perpetuated against the characters.<br/>——<br/></p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“Honey, I’m home,” Clarke calls from the front door. Slamming it with a foot as she yanks her scrub shirt over her head, dropping it aside. </p><p>She stops dead, mouth open.</p><p>“What?” Lexa asks, looking up from the table she’s strewn with incomprehensible lawyer things.</p><p>“Holy fuck,” Clarke croaks. Lexa looks down at her papers, then back up.</p><p>“What?” she repeats, but Clarke is busy sidling up on her prey. Making Lexa yelp when she yanks the chair out to straddle her legs.</p><p>“Oh, Miss Librarian,” Clarke breathes. “I’m so, so sorry I lost that copy of <i>The Well of Loneliness</i>. I promise I’ll pay my fine. Please, please don’t punish me with your ruler.”</p><p>Lexa nudges her glasses back up with the back of one knuckle. “That was weird, but also very specific.”</p><p>“Yes,” Clarke agrees happily, slinging her arms around Lexa’s neck. “You liked it.”</p><p>“Did I?” Lexa wrinkles her brow in doubt, turning it into a hum when Clarke kisses her. “No shirt,” she says, pleased. Then her eyes narrow, and dart towards the front door. </p><p>“Ah-pa-pa.” Clarke turns her head back. “Eyes front, Miss Woods.”</p><p>“You’re so messy,” Lexa grumps fondly.</p><p>“You like that, too,” Clarke insists, feeling a certain kind of victory when Lexa just snorts. Leaning in to kiss her, sloppy and heartfelt. Making Lexa gasp when she sets her teeth into the hollow below her clavicle.</p><p>“Bed,” Lexa says, hands pressing, insistent. “Clarke, bed. Bedroom.”</p><p>“Wait,” Clarke says, sucking another mark over the point of her shoulder. </p><p>“Why?” Lexa huffs, but she doesn’t try to get up.</p><p>“Because I say so.” </p><p>Below her, Lexa shivers. Clarke starts to pull back, wanting her expression, but stills when Lexa catches the back of her head. “Lex?” she asks, but Lexa pushes her face back into the curve of her neck. Obligingly, Clarke mouths across whatever skin she can reach. Sliding a hand into Lexa’s hair, canting her head to the side, lips sliding up the sharp rise of the tendon, down the cut of her jaw. Slow, slow, until Lexa is melted and breathing deep.</p><p>“Come on,” Clarke stands. Lexa blinks, eyes hazed and looking almost confused. </p><p>“What?” </p><p>“Come on, sweetheart,” Clarke repeats, and Lexa takes her hand, letting herself be led to the bedroom. One knee up on the bed when Clarke takes ahold of her shoulder, pulling back. “No,” Clarke says, and Lexa freezes. “Clothes,” she adds, to reassure.</p><p>Lexa swallows, and Clarke waits, letting the muscles under her hand go soft again. Pulling Lexa around, letting her stand as she strips the remainder of her own clothes, kneeling to pat each of Lexa’s feet to step out of her pants as Clarke pulls them away.</p><p>“Bed,” she finally says, and Lexa sighs as Clarke lays her out. Kissing her, weight half on her, until Lexa’s hands curl around her shoulders. </p><p>“I didn’t say you could touch,” Clarke says, going up on one elbow, Lexa stilling again. Peering up as Clarke circles her wrist, lifting it above her head. Her breath sucking sharply as Clarke trails her fingertips down to the second wrist, circles it with her fingers, pulls it up to cross over the first. Holding both, one handed, above Lexa’s head.</p><p>“Mine,” Clarke says, low and dark. Lexa tenses, and Clarke lets her fingers loosen, watching carefully. “Do you know how lucky I am to have you?” she asks, softly. “So smart and accomplished. Determined. I love that I’m the one who gets to watch you work. Love that I get to see that part of you.”</p><p>Lexa pulls in a long, trembling breath, shifting under Clarke’s hold. “Is this good?” Clarke asks, gentle and loving. Lexa swallows, stares. Long enough Clarke is about to let go, when her head jerks in a nod.</p><p>Clarke slides until her weight is resting fully on Lexa. Pressing her thigh between Lexa’s, watching the way her eyes snap shut, head tipping back. She rocks, happy when Lexa bends a knee up, foot planted to rock back. </p><p>Clarke lets it sweep straight into her blood. Pressed so close, moving so steady, and Lexa so pliant below her. Moving light but unceasing, until there is sweat growing slick at the hollow of Lexa’s throat, the dip of her own lower back. Nudging her nose into the dark shadow below Lexa’s jaw, running it up to rub their cheeks together. Craning back to watch the catch of Lexa’s teeth in her lip, the creases from the clench of her eyes, the balling of her fists as Clarke holds her wrists together.</p><p>“Baby,” she bends down to latch her teeth into an earlobe, and Lexa jerks. Breath sobbing and inarticulate, trying to arch under Clarke’s weight. Buoyed in sensation, but there’s a sharp whine that means she’s starting to founder. </p><p>“Shh,” Clarke hushes, sliding her weight back to one side, lacing the fingers of her gripping hand through Lexa’s limp ones. Lips running soft along her ribs, over the jump of her clavicle, across to the turn of her shoulder. Until Lexa’s breathing deepens, settled. </p><p>“You want my fingers?” Clarke asks, and Lexa exhales softly, nodding. Murmuring wordless as Clarke gathers wetness, circling just the way Lexa likes it. </p><p>Her thighs are trembling when Clarke starts to move her hand lower. Pausing when Lexa tenses, the fingers intertwined with Clarke’s clenching down.</p><p>“Right here,” Clarke tells her, attention back on Lexa’s clit. Moving to let the heel of her palm keep a deep pressure. “I’m right here,” she repeats, and Lexa locks up, toes curled and shuddering sweetly. </p><p>“Good,” Clarke tells her, low and nearly reverent. Rolling them, until she can press Lexa’s head against her shoulder. Running soothing hands up her sides, and feeling her nose press into the side of her throat. She drops her voice again. “My good girl.” </p><p>Above her, Lexa jerks, the hammer of her heart suddenly beating against Clarke’s own chest. <i>Shit, too much,</i> Clarke thinks, but then Lexa sighs, deflating completely against Clarke like a balloon settling to the ground. </p><p>“Sleep now, Lex,” Clarke says, running her hand through Lexa’s curls. Feeling Lexa nod against her skin as she flails a foot around for the covers.</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>☆</p>
</div><p>“I’m going to spend a couple nights at Anya’s,” Lexa tells her the next morning. Interjecting it into their cozily domestic coffee production dance, and shooting a cold wave directly up Clarke’s spine.</p><p>She cuts her eyes over, seeing Lexa poking fresh coffee grounds down into the filter.</p><p>“Lexa,” she says hesitantly, making her look up. “Last night…” The bubble of courage wavers, and she hurries the words. “Was there something you didn’t like?” </p><p>Lexa’s face scrunches in confusion, then smooths out. She steps forward, crowding Clarke against the counter, leaning in to kiss her, soft and reassuring. “No,” she says, then pulls back and hands her the coffee hopper. “Make the coffee, or you’ll be late.”</p><p>Clarke blinks twice, and makes the coffee. It doesn’t feel done, but it doesn’t feel like something she can push, either.</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>☆</p>
</div><p>Lexa comes back to Clarke’s apartment that night. Suddenly leaning against the door jam to the second bedroom that is Clarke’s one monetary indulgence. Clarke herself standing in the center of the dropcloth she uses over the carpet, considering her canvas.</p><p>“I like getting to see you like this,” Lexa says, making Clarke startle a little. </p><p>“Covered in paint,” Clarke quips, the oversized button down she’s got on over her shirt indeed, covered in paint.</p><p>“Luminous,” Lexa corrects, padding into the room. The kiss she presses against Clarke’s cheek is unhesitating. Still, Clarke keeps her touch light, her eyes on Lexa’s face for any sign of tension.</p>
<hr/><p>Clarke wakes up to the familiar tones of someone vomiting, and groans. ER. Night shift. Weekend. Drunks. She rolls over, ready to tell a nurse she’ll be there in a minute, and blinks.</p><p>She’s in her bedroom. In her bed. No on-call bunk, no nurse, no patient. More importantly, no Lexa. She flails out of the bedding, and pads sleepily to the bathroom.</p><p>“Sorry,” Lexa says, mostly into the toilet, forehead resting on the arm she’d slung across the seat.</p><p>“Because yeah,” Clarke gather’s Lexa’s hair back into her hand. “I’m a person that requires my girlfriend apologize for getting sick.” She reaches for a hair tie, snagging it with her fingertips, using it to corral Lexa’s curls.</p><p>“Cut it off,” Lexa says, face still mostly in the toilet.</p><p>“A rational response,” Clarke yawns. Lexa makes a pitiful noise. </p><p>“Sorry, baby.” Clarke rubs her back, thinking vaguely about what they’d both eaten the day before. “I don’t have any anti-nausea stuff here.”</p><p>“Counter,” Lexa says, rolling her flushed face to press a cheek against her arm. Tears from the pressure of reverse peristalsis shine in her eyes. “They didn’t stay down.”</p><p>Clarke finds the amber pill bottle. It’s Promethazine, prescribed to Lexa Woods for intermittent nausea. </p><p>“Not a bug, then.”</p><p>“No,” Lexa admits, then jerks, twisting back as dry heaves wrack through her. “Nng,” she moans, slumped and shaking.</p><p>“Making a call,” Clarke tells her. Finding her phone actually plugged in on the bedside table, for once. Lexa’s tedious insistence on organization creeping deeper and deeper into her routine.</p><p>“What,” Anya answers on the second ring. </p><p>“Lexa’s puking in my bathroom.” </p><p>A long pause, while Anya very obviously assimilates and collates. “It was supposed to be another day,” Anya finally says. Then, before Clarke can make inquiries about <i>what</i> was supposed to be another day: “she has <i>fisenon,</i>” Anya makes a frustrated sound, the English getting lost, “a...remedy. I can bring it.”</p><p>“Pills,” Clarke fills in. “She vomited them back up.”</p><p>“Shit,” Anya says, the sound of clothes rustling in the background, and a sleepy murmur that must be Raven.</p><p>“How long will this last, unmedicated?” Clarke asks.</p><p>“Three, four days,” Anya says, keys jangling over the connection. “I had to take her to the hospital, last time it was like this.”</p><p>“Okay,” Clarke says, running her free hand through her hair. “I’m going to call Octavia. She’ll get something she can’t puke back up. Pick it up on your way, and we’ll go from there.”</p><p>“On my way,” Anya says, the call clicking as it transfers to the car’s Bluetooth.</p><p>First steps done, Clarke goes back to the bathroom. Lexa has wedged herself into the little space between the toilet and bathtub. Clarke sits down with her own back against the tub, legs stretched out and hauling Lexa into her lap. “Anya’s coming.”</p><p>“Okay,” Lexa says, quiet. The close press of their bodies feels suddenly surreal. Knowing Lexa’s body right down to the bones, and not knowing her at all.</p><p>The cool of the tile floor leaks through the fabric of Clarke’s thin sleeping pants. </p><p>“Can I come back?” Lexa’s voice sounds hollow, and not just from the tile acoustics.</p><p>“What do you mean?” Clarke pauses her petting, confused. In her arms, Lexa trembles.</p><p>“Later,” Lexa adds, like it’s some sort of explanation. Clarke presses her gently outward, until they can see each other’s faces.</p><p>“Lexa, Anya’s going to bring medicine that will work better, not to take you anywhere.”</p><p>“Oh,” Lexa finally says. Clarke tucks her back against her chest, Lexa’s muscles still tense. Clarke squeezes her a little tighter, careful not to press against anything tender. Lexa curls a hand into Clarke’s shirt, letting Clarke hum softly into her hair, until Anya’s knock sounds. </p><p>“C’mon,” Clarke says, getting Lexa upright, and projecting a “come in,” towards the front door, everyone converging in front of the couch.</p><p>“<i>Hie, Onya,</i>” Lexa says, subdued and pale. Anya hands a paper sack to Clarke.</p><p>“<i>Socho, Leksa?</i>" Lexa just snorts, collapsing generally face first onto the couch. </p><p>It means, ‘what’s up,’ and Clarke finds the way it just pops into her head worth the hundreds of hours she’s spent trying to make that exact thing happen.</p><p>“My dinner,” Lexa says, mustering up something droll. Anya smiles, indulgent. </p><p>Clarke fishes out the vial Octavia has sent, drawing the liquid into the included syringe.</p><p>“Pants,” she tells Lexa, pulling the waistband down, circling the alcohol pad over Lexa’s exposed hip. “Deep breath,” she warns, snapping the needle into the muscle.</p><p>“Ow!” Lexa whines, jerking around to look.</p><p>“Don’t be a baby.” Clarke flicks her upper arm, earning a dour look in return. “Ten minutes to really feel it,” Clarke tells her.</p><p>Lexa murmurs appreciatively after five minutes, and goes limp at ten. Eyes drifting slowly down, then jerking back up. From her observation chair, Anya blows out a relieved breath, and it snaps Clarke right over some internal event horizon. </p><p>“You know who we give that drug to?” She jerks her chin towards the vial. “Chemotherapy patients. Diverticulitis, ulcerative colitis, chrones. All kinds of other deeply bad shit.” Her voice is too high, but it doesn’t matter. Anya needs to understand.</p><p>“Lexa isn’t sick.” Anya’s tone heavily implies one of them is being histrionic. A very small reserve portion of Clarke’s brain wonders about the vapor pressure of rage. The rest of her just sucks in breath, ready to scream.</p><p>“<i>Onya,</i>” Lexa upstages the speaking role. They both look at her, surprised. </p><p>“Hey,” Clarke says, suddenly gentle. “Sleep, Lex. Don’t fight it.”</p><p>Like most, Lexa goes against her doctor’s advice. Dredging up a slit-eyed glare, only slightly ruined by how her eyes are basically crossing. “<i>Gouva klin,</i> Anya. Don’t be an actual asshole.”</p><p>“It’s your story to tell,” Anya says, but Lexa flops a hand around. Largess and threat, somehow rolled into one. Then her hand drops down, overcome by the drowsiness of the drug.</p><p>It’s two in the morning. Clarke is tired. She does not have time for this bullshit. She marches to the kitchen, and slams the kettle down. “We’re having coffee, and you’re telling me what the fuck is going on.”</p><p>“Or?” Anya asks, sounding genuinely curious. Clarke points her most threatening finger, in her most threatening way.</p><p>“Eventually, Lexa will wake up.” </p><p>Anya actually laughs. Leaning back against the counter while the coffee brews, nodding when Clarke holds up the whiskey. </p><p>“In Trigeda, we had tea. Samovars, honey, the whole thing. I knew of coffee, but I never drank it until the refugee camps.” She holds the coffee cup under her chin, steam rising around her face. Clarke makes a wordless noise of attentive listening. </p><p>“Lexa turned fourteen three days before Azgeda triggered the genocide. I teased her about still being flat as a child and it got her blood so hot she bested me with quarterstaffs. First time in her life, and she crowed so loud.” Anya blinks, pulling herself out of the past. “There were rumors of violence, of course. People organizing, using secret codes on the radio, but there had already been months of rumors. Life had to go on.”</p><p>On Lexa’s forearms, there are fine white scars. Long lines that Clarke had run her thumb over as Lexa watched, eyes hooded. “They broke out windows, getting into homes. There was glass everywhere. It cut through the soles of our shoes, so Anya found me a pair of hiking boots. We stuffed extra socks into the toes, but they were still too big. I tripped.”</p><p>The memory is sweetly sharp. How she had pressed her hand to Lexa’s chest, desperate to feel the rise of her breath, and the coursing of her blood. Vital, and alive, and so preciously, singularly <i>Lexa</i>.</p><p>“She started to present nine months after we reached the camp,” Anya pulls Clarke from her own memories. “All bitchy, and itchy skin, and tripping over everything.” She quirked a smile. Proud, and sad. “Cute, when I thought she was a beta. Then she broke some little alpha boy’s nose for trying to shove his face into her neck.”</p><p>Clarke can read between those lines easily enough. If blond was prized, what value would an omega in the very first blush of genre presentation have? </p><p>“At home, she would have been celebrated. Another omega to be a leader of the people.” Anya shrugged. “All Lexa got was a pack of Oreos I stole, and a blackmarket supplier of puberty blockers. We started lying about her birth year, so it wouldn’t seem strange she hadn’t presented yet.”</p><p>Anya stops talking, but the story doesn't seem done. “And then,” Clarke promotes softly.</p><p>“And then,” Anya says, letting herself be nudged, “we came to the land of the free, and lost all our options. Couldn’t lie about her age on the asylum application. Couldn’t be nearly sixteen and without genre. Couldn’t be a beta and need suppressors.” Anya shrugs again, silent.</p><p>This time, Clarke just stares past her. </p><p>It’s possible that Clarke is, as a person, just as ridiculous as Anya claims. Just as irreverent, impractical, and irritating. All the adverbs. What she has never been, is stupid, and completing the pattern has always been easy, once the baseline is known. “But,” she opens her mouth with a pointless, stupid protest, “that would make her…”</p><p>“Sick,” Anya confirms. “Every cycle, the suppressors make her sick. That is what I chose to make her live with.”</p><p>“Why?” is all Clarke can think to say. Distracted by the way paradigms are slotting around in her brain, like bricks opening into Diagon Alley. </p><p>How the center of Lexa’s orbit is wherever Anya is. </p><p>And how her disappearances coincide her need for the suppressors. </p><p>Maybe how she had been smoking pot, that one, singular time. </p><p>“What was so goddamn dangerous that you decided to endocrinologically fuck Lexa for the rest of her life by giving her beta hormones?”</p><p>“Do you know what grooming is?” Anya asks, calm.</p><p>“I swear to god, Anya. If you’re talking about dogs.” She shakes her head, and presses a knuckle between her eyebrows.</p><p>“People,” Anya corrects. “A powerful person, a whisper in the right ear, a favor in the right place, some cash in the right hand. All in exchange for a whisper back, telling them of any fresh omegas in the system.”</p><p>Clarke feels the breath drag through her nostrils, the sharp sound of dread, but Anya doesn’t stop. This is what Clarke asked for, and what she’s going to get.</p><p>“They become a benefactor, taking a charitable interest. An older alpha who’s a little lonely, or a younger one looking for good press. Visiting a couple times a year to hand everyone a holiday present. Sponsoring a group trip to the local camp. They build relationship, familiarity. Pay some attention to their target, but nothing suspicious.</p><p>“Then, the omega ages out of foster care, or gets booted from an ICE group home. Staring down the barrel of working a shit job, earning shit money, living a shit life. They start to despair, and suddenly they cross paths with that old benefactor. Friendly, known, safe. The noose snaps closed.”</p><p>She looks at Clarke. “This country, and its obsession with bootstraps. Giving speeches that strength of will alone will always make a path. </p><p>The same politicians, and judges, and lawyers who sell promises of asylum in exchange for ownership of an omega child. Kept as a concubine. Raped at convenience, until they are dead, or broken, or just no longer interesting.”</p><p>Sickness is crawling through Clarke’s belly, but Anya’s eyes are a compulsion she cannot break. “You see now that for us there were no bootstraps, no better path. There were only the drugs I made sure she took.”</p><p>“How long,” Clarke finally manages to rasp out. “How long was she on the beta hormones?”</p><p>“Your ICE put her in a group home. Wouldn’t let me take her, saying we didn’t share blood.” Anya shrugged. “It took 18 months to finish our asylum hearings. She came to live with me, after, but the damage was done.”</p><p>“And now the suppressors make her sick. Will always make her sick.” Clarke already knows the answer. Still, Anya gives her the words.</p><p>“Yes.”</p><p>They both look at the sleeping woman. Burrowed into the couch, her hair haloed out around her head, her mouth open. Strong in the way she’s made herself, and fragile in the way all humans are, and so lovely.</p><p>“She never told me,” Clarke says. Which is, fundamentally, a moronic thing to say. Anya knows perfectly well Lexa never told Clarke. Clarke meets Anya’s eyes, deciding to just get the punishment out the way, but Anya has another surprise tonight.</p><p>It’s not that her face softens. Anya is not a soft person. It’s just that she has a way of looking. Clarke has seen it going towards Lexa, towards Raven, but she miscalculated what it would feel like to be the direct recipient of the way Anya could understand without pitying.</p><p>“That part of the story truly is Lexa’s,” Anya says, and she actually squeezes Clarke’s shoulder as she brushes past towards the door.</p><p>Clarke sits for a while. Finishing her coffee, and watching the steady rise and fall of Lexa’s chest. Thinking of the odds of them ever meeting, let alone anything more. A liquid gratefulness melting through her.</p><p>“Come on,” Clarke eventually says. Softly rubbing Lexa’s arm, then gently shaking a shoulder, then outright rag-doll manhandling. Walking her sleepily down the hall to the bedroom, where she pitches straight into the bed. Sighing loudly, and snuffling into the pillow.</p><p>“That’s my side,” Clarke reminds her.</p><p>“Fuck off,” Lexa advises, and starts snoring.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0008"><h2>8. Chapter 8</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p><b>Vegetable Advisory:</b> Peas, in pursuit of smut(ish).<br/>——<br/></p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Lexa is looking at her, when she wakes up.</p><p>“Creepy,” Clarke says, voice rough from sleep.</p><p>“Worried,” is all Lexa says, a line dug hard between her brows as she sits cross legged.</p><p>“Unnecessary,” Clarke stretches, luxurious, and makes a face at how Lexa’s line has twitched into annoyance. “What? I thought we were playing the One Word Game.”</p><p>“That’s not a game,” Lexa mutters, looking away. Swirling with something that can’t be teased away.</p><p>“Hey,” she sits up, reaching to briefly touch Lexa’s shoulder.</p><p>“I am sorry,” Lexa tells the wall over Clarke’s shoulder with the stilted formality of an immersive ESL class. “For deceiving you.”</p><p>“I’m not really angry about this,” Clarke says.</p><p>“By omission. I let you think I had work.”</p><p>“Lex,” Clarke drops her hand to Lexa’s knee, pulling gently, but Lexa twists towards the door.</p><p>“I understand if you’d like some time. I will go—”</p><p>Clarke pinches her. Lexa’s mouth snaps shut, cutting off whatever conversation she thought they were having. Looking at Clarke warily. </p><p>“I’m not angry,” Clarke says evenly. Lexa’s throat bobs as she swallows.</p><p>“Hurt?” she asks, and Clarke shrugs a little.</p><p>“You’re allowed to have personal things.” It comes out too neutral, and Lexa’s eyes drop down. </p><p>“I’m sorry.”</p><p>“I know,” Clarke says. The bedroom is filled with rectangles of morning light, slanting to make dust motes shine, swirling from the stirring of their breath.</p><p>“Was it me?” Clarke finally asks, making Lexa look up, confused. “Did I do something, or say something, that made you feel you couldn’t tell me?”</p><p>“No,” Lexa shakes her head, hard and rapid. “I…” she makes a frustrated noise, squaring the circle of emotions. “You’re so good, Clarke. You’re smart, and kind, and you work hard. You fight for your place, and make the fighting seem without toll, and you don’t complain about the injustice.”</p><p>Clarke works to process all <i>that</i> while Lexa shrugs, depreciating. “This is my one burden. I don’t need to be dramatic about it.”</p><p>Clarke flicks her ear. “Stupidhead,” she adds, satisfied at the way Lexa sputters like a teapot. “Is there any medical reason to suppress your cycle, beyond not wanting to get pregnant?”</p><p>Lexa stares at her, slit eyed and a hand to her ear.</p><p>“Well?”</p><p>“Yeah,” Lexa says, flat and hard, like Clarke has missed something. “How about the part where I’d like to avoid being treated like someone's brainless omega cumbucket six times a year?” Or, maybe I’d like to avoid the 85% chance of getting pregnant, and having the world decide I honey-trapped a promising young doctor with my breeding kink?” There’s color high on Lexa’s cheeks, and anger snapping against Clarke’s skin. “Is owning my own body a good enough <i>non-medical reason?</i>”</p><p>Clarke reels a little, but Lexa slumps. “Nobody wants to lose their dignity.” Quieter, “No one wants to be the thing that drags their partner down.”</p><p>“Lex,” Clarke says softly, but Lexa jerks away from it, and Clarke thinks about her genotype results. How it’s sitting in a drawer she’s been letting her eyes skate past for months, and how Lexa’s opinion on children is a blank she’s refused to fill.</p><p>“I think,” she says slowly. “I think maybe we haven’t done the best job of communicating.”</p><p>Lexa scoffs, still not looking, but that’s fine. Clarke can go first. </p><p>“My genotype is homozygous dominant, with two copies of alpha genre chromosomes. I had myself tested when we first got together.” Lexa looks at her. Clarke drops her own eyes away. “All omegas are homozygous recessive, with two copies of omega chromosomes. That means that genetically, any children I might have with an omega are guaranteed to be heterozygous, with one dominant alpha and one recessive omega gene.” She pauses, and then adds, just to make sure the implications are clear. “They’d be alpha females. Just like me.”</p><p>“Clarke,” Lexa says, anger gone, and Clarke swallows. She dredges up a smile. Probably pathetic, maybe even tremulous, but all humans have their pride.</p><p>“It’s okay. I don’t hate my life. Still, people want advantages for their kids, and being like this, like me, it’s not an advantage.”</p><p>“Hey,” tentative, Lexa taps her lap, a questioning invitation. Clarke flings herself with enough force to bowl them over, pressing as much body surface as possible against Lexa.</p><p>“<i>Oof,</i> Lexa wheezes, arms rising to circle Clarke. “Some people are still young, and don’t know how they feel about children in general, but aren’t automatically opposed to future generations being just like Clarke Griffin.”</p><p>Clarke cries. Deep, whooping breaths, and snot, and other bodily fluids. Because the world is full of compulsory abortions, and mutilated genitals, and also Lexa. Whose fingers are running through her hair, pressing behind her ears. “You fight so hard, Clarke. To be respected, by a society that wants to throw you away. How could I not admire that?”</p><p>“Okay,” Clarke finally says, wrung out and rough-voiced. “Okay.” She sits up. “I love you, you know. I know this is a shitty moment to maybe say that, but it’s true.”</p><p>Lexa smiles, blooming so slow that Clarke knows she’ll remember it forever.</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>☆</p>
</div><p>“There’s a shot I could get,” Clarke says the next morning. Just, kinda, tossing it out there. Lexa stiffens, and Clarke rushes forward. “It’s new, but it works. It would give us options. On birth control. That’s all. I’m not assuming you’d stop the suppressors. Just, it gives us options.”</p><p>She looks at her toast, waiting. After a long time Lexa says, “I can’t promise.”</p><p>“That’s okay,” Clarke looks up, finding Lexa’s shoulders hunched up, and her head down. “Maybe you’d go with me?”</p><p>Lexa unfurls, and nods.</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>☆</p>
</div><p>“Oh, Jesus.” Clarke snaps her eyes closed. “That is a long needle.”</p><p>“Oh, how the tables have turned,” Lexa says, arch, but she slips her fingers between Clarke’s and squeezes. </p><p>“Yeah yeah,” Clarke mutters, opening her eyes to glare. “There’s absolutely no difference between your glute, and my nads.”</p><p>“Alright,” the doctor tells them, smiling like she finds something cute, “here’s the ultrasound wand. The gel might be cold.” She presses it against Clarke’s skin, watching the screen intently as she makes small adjustments. </p><p>Clarke stares at the ceiling, at the obligatory poster of a kitten hanging in there, and considers that deeply existential question: <i>how the fuck did I end up here?</i></p><p>Hormones, she decides. Lust. </p><p>“There we go,” the doctor says. “One spermatozoa pouch.”</p><p>“Fantastic,” Clarke says, faint. Lexa rests the point of her chin high on her chest, and looks at her with a dopey grin.</p><p>“Little pinch,” the doctor warns.</p><p>“I regret that I have but one nad to give for my country,” Clarke says, and squeezes down on Lexa’s hand at the piercing of the bevel.</p><p>“Two,” Lexa reminds. Clarke growls at her.</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>☆</p>
</div><p>“I got you peas,” Lexa tells her, back at home. “The internet said peas help.”</p><p>“Hrm,” Clarke says, sitting carefully on the couch, flopping down sideways and rolling to her back. Listening to Lexa rummage in the freezer.</p><p>“Peas!” She proffers them, triumphant. “They mold. To you.”</p><p>“This is not very sexy,” Clarke says, a faint frown as she lets the peas be molded.</p><p>“No,” Lexa agrees, distracted. Then she looks up, and grins. “But it will be.”</p><p>Clarke thinks love might also be one of the routes that brings you to the more surreal moments of your life.</p>
<hr/><p>Lexa takes the suppressors through two more cycles of estrus. She stays at Clarke’s, takes the pills, and it’s fine.</p><p>It’s fine.</p><p>It actually <i>is</i> fine, because they use their words, like real, live, functional adults. </p><p>Lexa curling against her, talking about a hormonal response so intense it can change your personality, even your perceptions. Clarke pulling her into the bedroom, cuddled tight to breathe love into her ear, and against her skin. Kissing below her jaw, and the above the dip of her navel, and into the crook of her elbow. Pressing Lexa’s ear against her own chest, whirring rhythmically. All that, until the apology Lexa had tried to stutter out is gone, and she’s soft and relaxed.</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>☆</p>
</div><p>“You should take these three days off,” Lexa tells her one morning, tapping industriously on her phone. Clarke’s own phone dings with a calendar invitation.</p><p>“Oh?” she asks, only a little too high. She clears her throat. “Three days, huh?”</p><p>Lexa shrugs. “Best guess, based on research.”</p><p>“What kind of research,” Clarke asks, casual. </p><p>Or not, because Lexa winks, shoves lunch into her hands, and kicks her out the door. The lack of specifics is zero prophylaxis on spending a majority of her shift wondering.</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>☆</p>
</div><p>Lexa’s scent starts to rise between them, sweeter and sweeter. Still two days before the days Lexa marked on Clarke’s calendar, and cooking dinner together in the kitchen.</p><p>Well, Lexa is cooking, and Clarke is quote <i>helping by just looking pretty, stop touching that, I mean it.</i> Until Clarke crowds her against the refrigerator. Hands pressed against the metal to frame Lexa, nose pressed into the hollow under her jaw. </p><p>Lexa shivers, shrinks back. Breath caught, but it’s not a happy sound. Clarke drops her arms. “Baby?”</p><p>Lexa licks her lips, careful and hesitant. “Some of the research was…” she seems to hunt for the word. “Disconcerting,” she finally finds. Clarke steps back.</p><p>“We have our words,” she reminds gently, because they do. Green, yellow, red. Because that first time with Lexa wide eyed and subby under Clarke’s touch had not been the last, but they’re better educated now.</p><p>“I’m not sure it will matter,” Lexa says. Clarke soothes her thumb against the tension between Lexa’s eyebrows, but it doesn’t go away.</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>☆</p>
</div><p>They’re lying on the couch when it all starts. Lexa sprawled over Clarke, watching TV. Clarke soothing her hand lightly up Lexa’s back when she shifts.</p><p>Blinking back to herself when Lexa repositions again. Peering down, even as Lexa tosses the blanket off.</p><p>“Lex?”</p><p>“Too hot,” is all Lexa says. </p><p>Her scent, warm and no longer trapped by the blanket rises. Inside, Clarke feels something twitch.</p><p>They last two more episodes before Lexa groans, smushing her face into Clarke’s chest, between her breasts. “Clarke,” she begs. “<i>Clarke.</i></p><p>“Yup,” Clarke says, standing. Holding her hand back to Lexa. She blinks at it, slow. Clarke shakes it a little, and Lexa’s fingers slip across her palm.</p><p>“Bedroom,” Clarke says, leading them down the short hall. Leaving Lexa standing as she strips the bedspread and sheet back, bundling them together. She hucks them into a corner, and grins at Lexa, forced to exist next to disorganization. </p><p>Lexa stares at her. Eyes huge, breath so fast. Then, before Clarke can assess what is happening, she kneels. Graceful, but her head is twisted to the side, hands tight on her knees.</p><p>Clarke looks at her, feeling the line crease between her own brows. She puts a hand on Lexa’s shoulder. “What—” she starts to say, but Lexa is shaking. Clarke kneels, not as graceful, and Lexa looks at her, surprised. </p><p>Clarke traces the edge of Lexa’s upper lip. She’s still under the touch, eyes wide and wondering.</p><p>“Lexa,” Clarke says, and kisses just under the line of her jaw. She hears Lexa’s breath catch.</p><p>“Lexa,” she says, and slides her lips down to the hollow between Lexa’s clavicles. </p><p>“Lexa.” Clarke bows down, dragging Lexa’s sleeping pants down enough to kiss the point of each hip bone. Looking back up to find Lexa’s lips are softly parted, her breathing quick.</p><p>“Lexa,” she murmurs against those lips, and slides Lexa’s loose hands into her own hair, holding gently until they grip. Dropping her own hands to fit into the dip of Lexa’s waist and tipping backwards. Pulling Lexa along until her weight is settled on top, their legs tangled. </p><p>They’re flush along their full lengths, and Clarke cradles against the back of her neck. Holding the fragile swell of her skull and kissing until Lexa’s soft and melted against her. Pulling away to arrange gently until Lexa’s canted off to one side, and she can guide one of Lexa’s hands down her own stomach. Sliding until fingers dip just under the elastic waistband of her boy shorts.</p><p>“Clarke,” Lexa finally says, eyes still so open, almost confused, her voice lilting up into a near question. </p><p>“You and me, Lex,” Clarke tells her, moving until Lexa’s hand is fully cupped against her. “These are the things we do together, not to each other. Kneeling can be fun, if it’s something you want, but <i>only</i> if you want.”</p><p>Lexa’s hand is very still, but she lays her head down on Clarke’s shoulder, breath moving softly against Clarke’s chest. Pressed tight enough that Clarke can feel her swallow, and swallow again.</p><p>“Does that sound okay?” Clarke asks, when Lexa doesn’t say anything.</p><p>“What I want,” Lexa says, almost like she’s whispering to herself. Clarke spreads her legs, and lets go of Lexa’s hand. She can tell that Lexa’s looking down both their bodies, to where her hand is curled. She dips a finger, and Clarke makes an urgent, encouraging noise. Lexa looks back up. Clarke cups her cheeks gently, and kisses her softly.</p><p>“My beautiful girl.”</p><p>“Yours,” Lexa says back, two fingers now sliding up, finding the base of Clarke’s dorsal ridge and starting a soft press. “Your girl.”</p><p>“My good girl,” Clarke confirms. Lexa breaths out hard, the pressure of her fingers firmer. Clarke arches, and Lexa grins at her.</p><p>“Mine,” she says back, and nips at the skin of Clarke’s jaw. </p><p>“Definitely.” Clarke says, lifting her hips, chasing the touch. Lexa watches her, inches away, testing different rhythms and motions, until she hones in on something that makes Clarke clench and her hands grasp. </p><p>“That,” Clarke tells her. “Please, that.” Except Lexa can obviously tell. Her lips pressing against the side of Clarke’s face, warm and softly breathing, until <i>that</i> brings Clarke to a shuddering orgasm. Head thrown back, Lexa’s nose pressed into her pulse point.</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>☆</p>
</div><p>“It was porn.” Lexa is curled on her side, looking at Clarke. “The research.” She considers. “I mean the stuff about the duration of heat was from scholarly papers, but the rest was mostly porn.”</p><p>“Ha!” Clarke says, retroactively victorious. Lexa makes a face, curling an arm under her head. “Wait, is that why you knelt?” Clarke asks, much softer.</p><p>“Submission featured very heavily,” Lexa says.</p><p>“But you didn’t like it,” Clarke runs the pads of her fingers down the cut of Lexa’s jaw, earning a tiny kiss when she presses them against Lexa’s lips.</p><p>“The porn made it seem integral.” Lexa tells her, lips moving against Clarke’s fingertips. Clarke drags them down to the point of Lexa’s chin, keeping their gazes together.</p><p>“But you didn’t like it.”</p><p>“No,” she admits softly. “Not here, this time.”</p><p>“Then we won’t,” Clarke says, simply. For the first time, Lexa actually relaxes. “Meantime,” Clarke’s voice is unintentionally husky, “I believe I have a favor to return, Miss Woods.”</p><p>Lexa hums, following Clarke’s tug. She spreads her legs, heels hooking behind Clarke’s knees, and Clarke feels that deeply internal shifting again. She flinches, but it’s already over. </p><p>“Okay?” Lexa asks, and Clarke nods. Pressing her lips against the curve of Lexa’s breast.</p><p>That’s what does it.</p><p>“Ah!” Clarke cries as she everts, high and sharp. Hands clapping over whatever is happening in her groin. Then Lexa’s hands are there, too. Prying Clarke’s back a little.</p><p>“Clarke,” Lexa hushes her. “Give yourself a little room.”</p><p>“No!” Clarke yelps, holding tight, and rolling to the side. Something presses against her palms, and suddenly the cup of her hands is filled by something that does not appreciate the constriction. She yelps in an entirely different way.</p><p>“Didn’t I just tell you?” Lexa comments, then kisses the back of Clarke’s shoulder.</p><p>“No,” Clarke says, petulant.</p><p>“No, I didn’t just tell you?”</p><p>“Just, no. In general: no.”</p><p>“You’re ridiculous,” Lexa tells her, indulgent.</p><p>“So sayeth the Woods sisters,” Clarke mutters, disgruntled to be reminded of Anya. She feels Lexa’s impending rebuttal, and hisses “do not start that shit with you not being sisters, I swear to fucking god.”</p><p>“I’m going to give you that one, because you’re having a moment.” Lexa runs a palm softly down her arm, back up, roves across her back. Unhurried. </p><p>“Hm.” Clarke begs to differ about having <i>a moment.</i> </p><p>Lexa spoons close to her back, runs her lips up the back of Clarke’s neck, kisses wet behind her ear, brushes her palms down her biceps. “Pretty girl,” she whispers against Clarke’s back. “Beautiful girl.”</p><p>Over, and again, until Clarke realizes that she’s feeling just fine. That having Lexa pressed against her feels pretty fine, too. </p><p>“Okay,” she whispers back. Reaching for Lexa’s hand, when Lexa herself doesn’t move. Pulling Lexa’s arm over her hip, and sliding the flat of her palm down. “I…” Clarke says, and falters, but Lexa soothes a kiss against her shoulder. Moving her own hand to explore gently. Fingertips gliding, then the pressure of her fist, until Clarke makes a sharply pleading sound.</p><p>“Well, come on then,” Lexa laughs. Tugging and arranging until she’s rolled under Clarke. Their chests pressing together, her hips cradling Clarke’s, her heel on Clarke’s butt to guide her forward.</p><p>
  <i>Shazam,<i> Clarke thinks. Pressed up with her hands planted near Lexa’s ears, Lexa’s leg drawn up over her hip, arching to meet each other. Lexa’s lip between her own teeth, and Clarke’s teeth pressed to her throat. Set flat and no pressure, because not now, not now, but someday, someday, <i>someday,</i> because she is alpha and she is omega and between them all things are made.</i></i></p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>☆</p>
</div><p>“Would you change it, if you could?”</p><p>Lexa’s voice is quiet in the aftermath. Almost a whisper as she runs her palms down Clarke’s back, reaching to cup her butt, pressing their hips tighter. “Hurts, otherwise,” she adds, shrugging a little. Clarke pushes back up from her slumped collapse.</p><p>“Sorry,” she murmurs, and Lexa shrugs again. Apparently philosophical now, with the sharpest edge of her need temporarily satisfied, and Clarke still caught inside her.</p><p>“It’s just mechanics. We'll figure it out,” she says, then rolls her eyes at what Clarke definitely knows is a deeply smug grin, re: doing this again. “Would you?” she prods, original question still holding the floor.</p><p>Clarke thinks about it. What it would truly be like to be a beta. Walking through society, holding Lexa’s hand and never having to see eyes cut towards them in judgement. But in exchange, losing the thing they had just shared. The intensity before, and the perfect lock of their bodies after. Lexa made for Clarke, and Clarke made in turn for Lexa. </p><p>“No,” she says. It’s only the truth.</p><p> </p><p>EPILOGUE:</p><p>“Anya got me a mass spectrometer,” Raven says the instant the phone connects. “From government surplus. It’s giant, and 900 years old. I’m going to repair it, and see if I can detect the molecular weight of love.”</p><p>“I’m coming over,” Clarke tells her.</p><p>The mass spectrometer is, in fact, massive. Squatting ominously in the kitchen, taking up a significant portion of the open floor space.</p><p>“This is terrifying, and also incomprehensible,” Clarke tells Raven, sitting on the counter and knocking her heels into the cabinet. Raven nods slowly back.</p><p>“I think it means that I’m engaged.”</p><p>“Fucking monkey brains,” Clarke hisses, and sighs.</p><p>~FIN~</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>
  <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/18995521">Blue Electric</a>
</p><p>
  <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/19065211">God In the Details</a>
</p><p>
  <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/20716115/chapters/49216838">The Deeps and the Days</a>
</p><p>
  <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/21821905">Punctuated Equilibrium</a>
</p><p>
  <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/24353983/chapters/58727662">Et In Arcadia</a>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <a href="#section0001">To Believe In This Living</a>
</p></blockquote></div></div>
</body>
</html>